Radishes and Red Bandanas is a work of historical fiction set in the late 1960s with the backdrop of the Vietnam War protests. It’s 1967 and widespread resistance against the Vietnam War rocks college campuses. Becky abandons the security of her small Kentucky hometown to spend the next four years at Lake Forest College near Chicago. In this coming-of-age novel, Becky confronts the political and cultural turmoil of the times—protests, demonstrations, occupations, riots, assassinations, drugs, and free-love. As a woman, she will never have to fight in a war she doesn’t believe in, but the draft comes to her in its hunger for her brothers, friends, and lovers. She watches their agonizing decisions—go to Canada, jail, or Vietnam. Time and again, Becky finds love and loses it.
Forty years later, Becky’s son follows in her footsteps. Interspersed throughout the novel are vignettes of her son’s protests and arrests during the Occupy Wall Street Movement as he fights for justice in the streets of New York City.
Radishes and Red Bandanas is a story about the redemptive power of love to heal in times of tragedy and about the importance of speaking out no matter the cost.