Love from Far Away

In May of 1968, June Snow and Luke Havens meet while skinny-dipping at a commune near Redwood Harbor on the Northern California coast. June lives at the commune, and Luke is making his first visit due to a dare the night before by his logger and truck driver buddies.

June and Luke fall in love all too quickly, but they're both eighteen, and their troubled psyches mesh. June tries to explain the teachings of the Buddha, as passed down by her mother. Luke doesn't care much about what the Buddha had to say a few thousand years ago, though he soon begins to worship June.

They part ways, but three years later, June doesn't know that Luke has just returned to Redwood Harbor, hoping to find her.

Within forty-eight hours, the lives of eight people unexpectedly intertwine. New romances blossom, a marriage is destroyed, a psychotic fifteen-year-old seeks violent revenge, and a reckless philanderer is lured into the torment of unrequited love. Hippies, loggers, truckers, war veterans, sawmill workers, the local police department, and some long-suffering women all engage, and sometimes clash, as June and Luke reunite alongside the river where they first met three years before. As the ancient saying goes, no one ever steps into the same river twice . . .