ALICANTO FIREBIRD Paperback – April 15, 2025

It’s 1973. Vietnam rages on. Having skipped the draft, “Kurt” Kohler packs Baba, his black BMW sidecar motorcycle, with art supplies and heads for a place as far from Oregon as possible: Tierra del Fuego. But in communist Chile, a country on the edge of collapse, he’s abruptly stuck. No money. No passport. Getting a replacement is going to take weeks and considering how he got the first one, may expose him and really screw things up. Ending up in the back room of a Valparaiso brothel in the most disreputable part of town, he simmers with a near religious need to get back to the only freedom that he’s found: the freedom of the open road. Shadowed by the memory of his mothers death and practiced at retreating into art, he now has to deal with others - the working girls, an underage bartender, an American reporter, the pretty daughter of an embassy official - and a woman named Victoria.Caught up in political upheaval and wrestling with issues of identity and grief - as well as the true nature of the universe - Kurt experiences surreal encounters with beauty, loss, danger, hallucinations, and revelations, constantly sketching and finding something else to paint. But brushes on canvas turn to brushes with crime as he’s gradually drawn into Victoria’s dangerous pursuits, sparking a compulsion towards a darker side of sex. Then everything blows up. On the bright side, perhaps some espionage will help.At times he feels quite mad. Madness has too much imagination.Poetic and profane, Alicanto Firebird explores the chaos and clarity of youth with raw honesty and dark humor, a spiritual quest in the guise of an outlaw road trip. Read more