"Reading Mr. Hosch's memoirs made me feel as if I was part of every scene, whether living the idealistic hippie life in San Francisco or alongside the colorful characters in the ashrams of India. It's the agenda-less storytelling of a trusted friend who never manipulates the reader or leaves anything uncomfortable out of his narrative to make himself look good." RSF, Auteur, Social Media influencer.
"The writing transported me from my home in Miami straight to the Jersey Shore, Berkeley, and San Francisco. Jersey Goes West is a compelling mix of cynicism, hope, and humor." D.T. Beta Reader
An intelligent boy with undiagnosed learning disabilities is virtually shut out of the education system due to his lackluster grades in math and science. His parents and teachers accuse him of laziness, although his real problem is Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and dyscalculia (trouble with numbers).
In college, he experiences an epiphany on LSD and realizes that there is more to life than a dreary middle-class existence. In the following months, he grows his hair long, dresses in bellbottoms and army jackets, and becomes the most notorious marijuana dealer on his college campus. When the college ejects him for poor grades (among other things), the young man and his best friend take a cross-country road trip in an old Mercury Comet and end up in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district in 1969, aspiring to become famous musicians.
He attends Grateful Dead concerts at the Fillmore West, finds disappointment at Woodstock, witnesses the Stones' ill-fated gig at the Altamont Racetrack, and gets busted (and acquitted) on drug charges. Things get tense when some new acquaintances get busted trying to sell fifty pounds (two shopping carts full) of marijuana to a federal drug agent. He realizes that if he doesn't change his outlaw life, he could be next.
ABOUT THE BOHEMIAN SPIRIT TRILOGY
A creative kid on the Jersey Shore performs well on IQ tests but struggles in school with undiagnosed learning difficulties; his worst subjects are math and science. Jersey Goes West opens in 1951 when he is sent away to a Jewish summer camp at four years old and ends in 1969 when his friends are arrested trying to sell fifty pounds of marijuana to a federal agent in Haight-Ashbury. Having narrowly avoided serious trouble, he renounces his life of crime and looks to Eastern philosophy for his future.
In his second book, Undercover in India, we see him as a young aspirant at the beginning of a serious yoga and meditation practice. He meets a venerable Indian swami and tours the US as his assistant. After the tour, the swami convinces him to sell his beloved VW bus and buy a plane ticket to India. Leaving the country for the first time, he stops over in London, Cairo, South Yemen, and lands in sweltering Bombay, where he is surprised to see cows roaming on the runway. For the next year, he lives in the ashram of an all-knowing guru and becomes a trusted disciple. But when his guru is suddenly arrested on politically motivated murder conspiracy charges, he enters an obscure monastery with no electricity or running water, he later goes undercover with wandering sadhus in the holy city of Varanasi.
The third book of the series, The Fingernail King, chronicles the next twenty years of his life, in which he runs a small but successful business painting Hawaiian scenes on fingernails in Waikiki Beach, Hawaii. In this e-book, he spills the inside tea on the clever scammers and con artists who make a living cheating naive visitors, year after year.
