The Campbell Club: An Historical Romance

In the ’Greed is Good’ 1980s, a quirky Buddhist wannabe makes friends and influences people at the infamous ＂Campbell Club,＂ a student housing co-op in Eugene, Oregon, where the members are known for studying hard and playing hard.
Robert Gray, aka Sutra, wants normality back in his life after a stint at Rajneeshpuram (the intentional community branded a cult by the Establishment.) A friend encourages him to return to school and complete his education as a path back into the world.

He discovers the Campbell Club is a cultural and spiritual microcosm of the wider world and falls under the spell of a dance major named Cindy Sterling. However, unable satisfy her, he gets some help in matters of the heart from an unlikely source.

Meanwhile the co-op is changing. New members bring chaos and threaten to disrupt everything the Campbell Club stands for, while old members including Cindy leave. The catalyst of this period is the mysterious ＂love drug＂ Ecstasy: so powerful it alters personalities forever. Some, perhaps for the better; but there is danger as well. As the situation spirals out of control, friendships are broken, love lost, and betrayal leads to disaster.

Unlike my first three novels, this one does not contain any explicit sex scenes, nor any violence to speak of. No one gets shot with a machine gun or blasted with a disintegration ray, as in my my second novel, The Book Depository. So I consider this story is more likely in the ’literary’ category. It is playful and fun and the protagonist, Sutra, who speaks in the first person (it is mainly a first person POV, my first attempt at that style) is not me. I’m a nerd and a lot less adventurous than he is. I will have to leave it to the reader to decide if any of that works. If so, please do leave a review. They are hard to come by and I’d like to know what you think.

There’s no AI generated writing in the manuscript. Zero. It is all ＂written by hand＂ if that is of any consequence.