Description
What would you do if your country was on the wrong side of history?
Would you leave if you had the chance—even if leaving might ruin the rest of your life?
In 1967, Joseph Mark Glazner, a twenty-two-year-old American writer, left Los Angeles behind forever and became one of the first war resisters to go to Canada during the extremely divisive Vietnam War.
Life After America is Glazner’s upbeat, personal memoir about his first two years in Canada as an FBI fugitive, new immigrant, tabloid writer, journalist, and John Lennon’s accidental muse.
Glazner, an internationally acclaimed crime novelist, recounts with dark humor and the eye of a thriller writer his nearly bungled escape from the US, the sweetness and pitfalls of love in an era of sexual revolution, and his own youthful quest to make an impact on the world.
Like many new immigrants throughout history, Glazner soon discovered that physically emigrating was easier than emotionally leaving his homeland.
Before leaving the US, Glazner rarely heard news about Canada. Consumed with exiting the US as his personal protest against the war, he thought little about where he was going except that it had to be someplace not at war. Canada was the closest safe haven, but he knew so little about it he thought Montreal was on the Atlantic Ocean somewhere north of Boston. He had no idea what Quebec separatists were.
In Canada, half the news coverage was American. He couldn’t escape its impact. Glazner chronicles his own psychological turmoil as the war continued to escalate, and two men of reason—Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy—were assassinated. He watched with growing despair as Richard Nixon became President on the promise of a secret plan to quickly end the war. (Spoiler alert: there was no secret plan.)
In Canada, Glazner bore witness to the early years of Pierre Trudeau and the growing threat from terrorist bombs to Ca
Would you leave if you had the chance—even if leaving might ruin the rest of your life?
In 1967, Joseph Mark Glazner, a twenty-two-year-old American writer, left Los Angeles behind forever and became one of the first war resisters to go to Canada during the extremely divisive Vietnam War.
Life After America is Glazner’s upbeat, personal memoir about his first two years in Canada as an FBI fugitive, new immigrant, tabloid writer, journalist, and John Lennon’s accidental muse.
Glazner, an internationally acclaimed crime novelist, recounts with dark humor and the eye of a thriller writer his nearly bungled escape from the US, the sweetness and pitfalls of love in an era of sexual revolution, and his own youthful quest to make an impact on the world.
Like many new immigrants throughout history, Glazner soon discovered that physically emigrating was easier than emotionally leaving his homeland.
Before leaving the US, Glazner rarely heard news about Canada. Consumed with exiting the US as his personal protest against the war, he thought little about where he was going except that it had to be someplace not at war. Canada was the closest safe haven, but he knew so little about it he thought Montreal was on the Atlantic Ocean somewhere north of Boston. He had no idea what Quebec separatists were.
In Canada, half the news coverage was American. He couldn’t escape its impact. Glazner chronicles his own psychological turmoil as the war continued to escalate, and two men of reason—Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy—were assassinated. He watched with growing despair as Richard Nixon became President on the promise of a secret plan to quickly end the war. (Spoiler alert: there was no secret plan.)
In Canada, Glazner bore witness to the early years of Pierre Trudeau and the growing threat from terrorist bombs to Ca