A Bowl Full of Nails
Charles Degelman
Harvard Square Editions

Synopsis — May 25, 1969, Berkeley, CA — Fiery young Gus Bessemer vows to stop the war in Vietnam. His weapon of choice? Guerrilla street theater. But when a Berkeley riot squad escalates from teargas to shotguns, Gus' defiant art attack screeches to a halt.

Injured, outraged, and on the lam — Gus splits for the Colorado Rockies to work with his hands and get his head together. Ironically, Gus' quest for inner peace brings him face-to-face with a Rocky Mountain counterculture full of colorful communards, FBI snitches, stolen dynamite, and a dead body in the National Forest.

A Bowl Full of Nails offers the reader a suspense-filled tale bursting with humor, espionage, and rebellion while the author explores Gus' dance between personal demons and political resistance.

A deftly crafted novel from first page to last, A Bowl Full Of Nails is an impressive testament to author Charles Degelman's talents as a skilled, engaging, and above all, entertaining story teller. A rewarding read, A Bowl Full Of Nails is highly recommended for personal reading lists and community library General Fiction collections.

— Carl Logan, Midwest Book Review