Wanderlust: A Wartime Search for Hope and Home

First Place Winner of Best Novel in the Delaware Press Association Professional Communications Contest 2022! Kate Ketchum is inflicted with the disease of desire. Impassioned with fantasies of a singing career and traveling the world, she abandons her generations-old family tradition working at the declining Owl & Shamrock shoe factory. Leaving the stage of the local pub she's graced for years, Kate pursues her music education, when a surprising college scholarship to the University of Connecticut provides her escape route. Enter Michael James. Back from two tours in Vietnam with haunts and secrets he's loath to share, he rejects his father's Harvard legacy and family business, and heads to UConn. Wanderlust captures the college campus life where Kate and Michael's worlds collide in 1968 against the backdrop of the Vietnam war—passionate times of change, hippies, and history. Disappointments, distractions, and devastation, U-turns, misfortunes, and the fast lane lure each of the characters to unexpected destinations—from an institution for disabled youth to a concert in Paris to the bustling streets of Bangkok. Will their differing passions and history heal them or tear them apart?