A coming-of-age story of sex, booze, rock 'n' roll and conscience at the shook-up start of the swinging sixties, set in the turmoil of the 'No Maoris, No Tour' protests, the Hastings Blossom Festival Riot and Elaine Miscall winning the Eastbourne Mardi Gras beauty contest. Students push personal and public boundaries in election year, shadowed by authorities who tilt pranks and wild parties to violent death. A turbulent year as protesters and a reinvigorated National Opposition challenge a tired Labour Government. Well-known figures play parts in the novel: poet James K. Baxter, publisher Hugh Price, leftwing writer Conrad Bollinger, the iconoclastic Dr Erich Geiringer, restaurateur Harry Seresin, lawyer Bill Sheat, lecturers Jack Shallcrass, Pat Mascaskill and Harry Orsman, politician Dan Riddiford, anarchist Bill Dwyer, playwright Bruce Mason, novelist Barry Crump, balladeer Peter Cape, café owner Mary Seddon, communist Rewi Alley, entertainer Carmen. Steve Marr launches 1960 illegally up the Eastbourne Mardi Gras pole, police waiting below. He gets involved in student protest against the all-white All Blacks, with an anarchist prankster raids visiting American nuclear submarine and joins in the Hastings Blossom Festival Riot. He swings from National Party girls to hippie star-gazer to left-wing lifestylers, sliding to backstreet abortion, the emerging drug culture and violent death. Never far away is an ex-cop with another agenda.