I had a hard time getting into the first few pages of Monkey Temple, mostly because I didn’t feel well-grounded at the onset. However, I was soon captivated. As a woman of a certain age (roughly the same age as Jules, the protagonist of Monkey Temple), I found myself both living the story and reliving my own past as a child of the Age of Aquarius. I appreciated Jules’s lifelong search for himself and for enlightenment. He and various characters he’s met on his journey and remained at least on-again, off-again friends with for decades, are staring into the face of death. Scenes in the present pull up memories of the past and trips to Spain, Kathmandu, India, Morocco, sometimes using drugs, sometimes not. Jules, unsure of what he wants to do with whatever time he has left, and seeing his friend Ralston’s despair over a cancer diagnosis, embarks on a chaotic, aging-hippie road trip with all the wit of Kerouac and Kesey.
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Monkey Temple is available through Amazon and B&N. **Most links in this article are Amazon links.**
