WINNER: 2016 Beverly Hills Book Awards WINNER: 2016 Southern California Book Festival in Regional Fiction Amid the turbulent 1960s arises an intriguing tale of love, betrayal, and death in the ever-historic Charleston, South Carolina. As marine maverick Mike Romano steps off the naval base, he has no inkling of what civilian life has in store for him. After retrieving his wife from his hometown of New York City, he launches a new career as an insurance salesman, with a fire for putting the past behind him and achieving great success.
But Mike quickly finds himself hawking burial insurance and collecting weekly premiums in a predominately black ghetto. This isn't what he had envisioned, but the exposure ignites a different kind of internal flame-one that is quiet but strong. It gets him involved in a political group intent on positive social change, which introduces him to a fascinating, wealthy, older woman with high political ambitions who sets her sights on him. As his involvement in the civil rights movement intensifies, so does the groundswell against the Vietnam War. Tensions rise along with racial hostility, murders, bombings, and burnings, and Mike soon realizes that America is no longer the country he once swore to defend.
Experience these historical and iconic events, through the life of one passionate man in search of personal fulfillment and public justice.
About the Author: Michael D. Mercurio is an insurance and real estate professional. Born in New York City to a family of Italian Americans, he served in the US Marine Corps for six years and earned a degree in philosophy from the College of Charleston, where he was a member of the honors History and English program, and was deeply involved with a political group that made for social change in Charleston, South Carolina.
Mike Mercurio currently lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, with his wife of thirty years.
