It’s late 1969 and Communist China has successfully launched its first satellite. Inspired by this feat, a group of college students in Laguna Beach, California, set out to put their own satellite into orbit in homage to the recent Woodstock Festival.

A young Canadian graduate student at the University of California finds himself at the centre of the mayhem when he and his friends break into a mothballed missile silo and commandeer everything they need, including a nuclear warhead, to blast the Woodstock Nation into the space age. The activists have big plans for their loot, schemes that may well culminate in the Light Show to End All Light Shows in the Nevada desert.

An extraordinary black comedy shot full of the social and political issues of the time, Woodstock Rising is a coming-of-age tale couched in free love, rock anthems, and revolution as well as a chronicle of an era whose causes continue to speak to us.

Tom Wayman's profile page

Tom Wayman has published 25 previous books, including High Speed Through Shoaling Water, Boundary Country, A Vain Thing, and the 2003 Governor General's Award–nominated volume of poems My Father’s Cup. He divides his time between the University of Calgary, where he teaches, and his estate in Winlaw, British Columbia.

"...well-drawn characters, along with richly detailed descriptions of time and place, combine to transport readers to Southern California circa 1969. You can almost smell the pot smoke mingling with the ocean mist."

FFWD Magazine

"The author takes great care to reconstruct the 1960s."

Alberta Views

"Part satire, part serious cultural chronicle, and part wish-fulfillment fantasy, Woodstock Rising is an enjoyable and insightful novel. It will resonate particularly with those readers who lived through the turbulent times of the late 1960s - especially those who missed out on the original Woodstock."

Canadian Literature