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Michael Lund

Michael Lund is a writer who has made several titles from his Growing Up on Route 66 series of novels available as free audiobooks.

A coming of age story in a small town along the famous highway, Route 66. Novelist Michael Lund's Route 66 kids are the generation that grew up in America after World War II, experiencing childhood in the innocent 1950s but coming of age in the turbulent 1960s. Their stories are told in seven novels stretching form the post-War period to after 9/11. Growing up on Route 66, first book in the series, is set in a Missouri small town along “America's Main Street.” The story of Mark Landon, Marcia Terrell, and their friends takes place in a neighborhood known to the children growing up there as the “Circle.” That time and place are remembered as ideal, but closer scrutiny repeatedly–and often humorously–complicates this innocent picture.

After September 11, 2001, novelist Michael Lund found that the emerging War on Terror recalled aspects of the Cold War in the 1950s. And his experience as an Army correspondent in Vietnam (1970-71) offered clues to the demands a new generation of America's youth would face in the 21st century. Route 66 to Vietnam: A Draftee's Story traces the fate of Mark Landon and other children from Growing Up on Route 66 (an earlier novel in the Route 66 Novel Series) through Southeast Asia and on to prosperous–if troubled–times later in life.

Successful highway engineer Mark Landon is irritated by a sore tooth, by a rebellious teenage son, by a daughter's lack of interest in her promising athletic career, by his wife's apparent indifference to his needs, and by Ralph Banister, whose land is blocking the path of the highway Mark must build. Beneath these everyday worries, however, memories of his time in Vietnam are stirring. To survive a mid-life crisis, he begins to fear that he must not only confront the challenges of the present but also the ghosts of his wartime experiences. In doing so he learns surprising things about his wife's past, about his children's abilities, and about Ralph Banister's vision for America.