The Karma Charmer
Still a hippie twenty-five years after Woodstock, Howser falls in love with a beautiful twenty-something college business major, but their relationship is complicated by her ambitions and the arrival of his ten-year-old love child
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A quarter of a century after the counter-culture's moment of glory at the Woodstock Festival of Music and Art, Dick Howser's dreams of a Woodstock Nation may be dusty, but they've never truly died. He still thinks peace, love, and happiness are attainable - it's just going to take longer than he originally thought. Fortysomething isn't as cool as twentysomething, but it has its moments.When the senior dorm at the local college near Woodstock burns to the ground, Howser is among the townsfolk pressured into boarding a homeless student. Beautiful twenty-one-year-old Leslie Zack winds up being more than Howser bargained for, and soon he is head-over-heels in lust and then, much to his surprise, genuine love. Leslie's plans for her future include a high-powered job on Wall Street and a carefree, expensive life-style in New York City, and not spending her life with an aging, slightly overweight former hippie who sells "recycled goods." Truly smitten, Howser devises a bizarre and elaborate strategy to convince her to stay.We all know what happens to the best-laid plans, so when Howser's ten-year-old love child, whom he hasn't seen in eight years, shows up with the remains of his mother in a peanut brittle can, suddenly Howser's calm simple Aquarian life-style begins to resemble a '90s nightmare. Bummer.Still, he finds hope for salvation in surprising sources, including an old lover named Dove, an Oriental sex manual, a former psychic turned tycoon, and two well-preserved acid-laced sugar cubes from his more indulgent days. Peace.
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