The Draft Dodger Dues: A Banquet of Crow

by Robert Ziegler

If we are paying attention at all, we come to realize that every story has several sides. If history is to achieve any degree of accuracy in its description of our collective evolution, then it should be balanced by the telling (and the listening) to more than one version of an historic event. We have been presented with numerous books and an abundance of movies that recount in graphic detail the story of the veterans of the Vietnam War. But we have not, for some reason, been told the various sides of this story, The Draft Dodger A Banquet of Crows is Robert’s version. Ziegler’s tale takes his readers on a journey from the fall festivals in Allentown, Pennsylvania, to the 1960’s circus of Haight-Ashbury, through the aspen groves of North Western BC, to the communes and port-side streets in the Maritimes, through the deserts of Mexico, and back, again, to BC. Ziegler as Vietnam draft dodger, metamorphoses from college professor, to log cabin hippie, into Maritime street-poet, clown, bankrupt mime, addictions therapist, and, finally, fulfilled husband and father. Suffused with poetry and drama, and written with courage and vulnerability, The Draft Dodger A Banquet of Crow explores the feelings of confusion, heartbreak, loss, and hope that cultural exile ultimately fosters (taken from the back cover).

367 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2006