Hitchhiking from Vietnam: Seeking the Ox
by Richard Chamberlin

Publication Date: April 2007

This is a funny and intelligently written memoir of a Vietnam veteran’s search for self.

Hitchhiking from Vietnam is an account of a Vietnam veteran Richard Chamberlin’s meandering journey to fulfillment during the 60’s and 70’s based on an actual cross-country hitchhiking trip the author took when he was 30 years old.

The story starts in 1975 in the liberal enclave of Madison, Wisconsin. While the war in Vietnam has just ended and Chamberlin has been out of the service for five years, he is still trying to put his life back together. The first chapter begins in a run-down Madison laundromat where the author meets a mysterious character named Ken-Adi whom he hopes might be his guru. The two of them decide to take off on an adventure together and hitchhike to San Francisco.

The trip becomes a spiritual quest and a window into the past. The central part of the book is a series of flashbacks of Chamberlin’s experiences with the Navy’s Seabees in Vietnam. While there he wrestles with the absurdities and paradoxes of that war just as today’s veterans will have to deal with the contradictions inherent in the current war in Iraq. At the end of the book the author has a conversation with an old friend who inadvertently helps him put the pieces of his life back together as they watch horses cavort in a corral at sunset on the outskirts of Ft. Collins, Colorado.

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The Cybernetic Possum
by Richard Chamberlin

Publication Date: June 2010

These eclectic musing from Richard Chamberlin’s mind in the form of stories and images  will delight readers whether they are attracted to the real or the almost real, poetry or prose.

Short Stories...
What happens when a widely syndicated right wing talk show host tries to make a joke about carrying a bomb before boarding a plane to the East Coast?

What is it like driving Ralph Nader and his entourage on a campaign swing through southern Wisconsin right before the presidential election of 2000?

What happens when the author is struck by lightning while bushwhacking through the mountains in central Colorado?

How does a Vietnam veteran finally come to grips with a horrific scene that has been haunting him since he returned to the states?

...and Poetry
Some of the poems are hard-edged like An Inside Job about a conversation with a rape victim while others are whimsical like The Cybernetic Possum, about an injured animal he wished he hadn’t passed one night on the road.

A very special section honors the posthumous works of Madison poet Greg Knutson.

	Richard Chamberlin has a BA in Journalism from Columbia College and has been a newspaper reporter, freelance writer, psychiatric nurse and cab driver. He lives in the small town of Monona just outside of Madison, Wisconsin with his wife. Phone/Fax: (608) 222-7136 email: jet@spinozapublishing.com
Richard Chamberlin