Love Me Two Times — Philip Michaels

In Love Me Two Times, Philip Michaels faithfully recreates the sights, sounds, epic events, and evolving counterculture that defined the turbulent, politically pivotal late 1960s, through the prism of two young people trying to find love amidst the existing bigotry and chaos. In 1968, Patrick Golden, a Berkeley sophomore with Jewish and Irish-Catholic roots, is the face of entire generation of upwardly mobile, postwar, working-class progeny flocking to America s colleges and universities. Despite his family s modest finances, he manages to convince his father, a crusty pipe-fitter who represents the old-school beliefs and biases of the past generation, to allow him to join Charles Comstock, his affluent and socially well-connected former college roommate, at Harvard University for the summer. There, surrounded by old-moneyed aristocrats and Mayflower descendants, Patrick falls in love with Morgan Thackeray, a stunningly beautiful and free-spirited coed from one of Boston s oldest, wealthiest, and most powerful families. Their romance blossoms, despite her bigoted father's virulent objections and menacing threats, until it is ripped apart by a dark secret Morgan is compelled to hide. Forty-one years later, Patrick, now a wealthy, divorced, retired lawyer, reconnects with Morgan in Boston at Charles Comstock's funeral, and his life is dramatically altered when he learns the shocking secret that she has been keeping.