Bob Deans’ “The Bicycle Man” Sees 1968 Through the Eyes of a Young Paperboy
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In today’s episode 201, guest hosted by lawyer turned 5th grade school teacher turned 18th Century docent, Janet Wade, who happens to be married to host Landis Wade, we visit with Bob Deans, author of “The Bicycle Man,” a novel that allows the reader to experience the emotional and turbulent headlines of 1968 as seen through the eyes of a young paperboy.
Bob Deans started out in the news business when he was ten years old, delivering his hometown paper, the “Richmond Times-Dispatch.” He spent three decades as a reporter for “The Post & Courier” of Charleston, S.C., and “The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,” including four years as Chief Asia Correspondent, based in Tokyo, and eight years covering the White House and he’s a former president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.
Major Garrett, Chief Washington Correspondent, CBS News, says of the book: “Lyrical, lustrous and tender. Deans is a craftsman, and the words here flow with certainty, truth and ache, taking us into the promise, discovery and heart of a boy as the world outside both marches forward and encroaches on his own. A beautiful and captivating story.”
Connect With the Author
About the Author:
Bob Deans started out in the news business when he was ten years old, delivering his hometown paper, the “Richmond Times-Dispatch.”He spent three decades as a reporter for “The Post & Courier” of Charleston, S.C., and “The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,” including four years as Chief Asia Correspondent, based in Tokyo, and eight years covering the White House.
He’s a former president of the White House Correspondents’ Association and author of the nonfiction book, “The River Where America Began: A Journey Along the James.” His debut novel is “The Bicycle Man.”
Bob is married to the artist and children’s book author Karen Deans. They live in Bethesda, Maryland, and have three grown children.
Praise for the Book
“Lyrical, lustrous and tender. Deans is a craftsman, and the words here flow with certainty, truth and ache, taking us into the promise, discovery and heart of a boy as the world outside both marches forward and encroaches on his own. A beautiful and captivating story.”
-Major Garrett
Chief Washington Correspondent, CBS News
“Bob Deans’ meticulous detail and lyrical writing make the adventures of a paperboy learning about life, love and social order in the South in 1968 come alive. Anyone who loves the sound of the morning paper slapping the sidewalk will revel in the descriptions of newspaper work. At times funny, sad, suspenseful and always thoughtful, The Bicycle Man is an American classic.”
-Marsha Mercer
Columnist, the Richmond Times Dispatch
“This is a jewel of a book, its polished facets of memory and history, of love and regret, shifting with the light. Deans evokes a time and place — Richmond, Virginia, in the late 1960s — dangling between past and present, seen through the eyes of a teenaged boy living passionately in the here and now. The story is powerful and touching, showing humility and affection for people caught in time, as we all are.”
-Edward Ayers
President Emeritus of the University of Richmond and finalist for the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize
About Co-Host Janet Wade
Janet lives in Charlotte with her husband, Landis, the host of Charlotte Readers Podcast, and their two rescue dogs, Gus (15), and Lori (11). With an empty nest and more time to explore interests, Janet enjoys participating in her faith community, reading, walking, yoga, genealogy, crochet, homesteading, and researching Eighteenth Century history, especially the clothing, cooking, and herbal medicines. She loves to travel and explore the world but her “happy place” is the North Carolina mountains, and she retreats there as often as possible; sometimes, she invites Landis to join her.
About the Book
For Sandy Rivers, the known world is the suburban landscape of his morning paper route, an intimate if unsteady place where comfort, illusion, sanctuary and myth are shattered by daily headlines that chronicle a country torn by Vietnam, Civil Rights and the struggle for national purpose.
It’s the spring of 1968. Belief in American providence is clashing with the limits of American might. During the next breathtaking year, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gets killed in Memphis, Robert Kennedy is shot in L.A., Richard Nixon goes to the White House and Neil Armstrong walks on the moon.
For a heartland community of aging Buicks and loblolly pines on the outskirts of Richmond, Virginia, the racial fault line is a bamboo grove at the edge of a honeysuckle swamp. The contest for the soul of the nation plays itself out in Sundaysermons and over lingering suppers of hot biscuits and slaw. And the messenger for national promise and peril is Sandy, who delivers the news, the good with the bad, on a mission he takes on each day before dawn.
While Sandy confronts the growing pains of a new job and his first love, his papers reveal a nation grappling with its own adolescence and the epic foibles and fortunes that brings. Helping him sort it all out is a mysterious figure with a tragic secret who both challenges the boy and stands by him as Sandy confronts a staggering loss.
This is a story of friendship. This is a story of hope. It’s the story of an era that helped shape our country and define our times, told through one boy’s extraordinary journey through his own small patch of America. And it’s the story of a debt he can never repay to someone he knows only as, The Bicycle Man.
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