Escape From Elyria: A Memoir of the 20th Century

Escape From Elyria, a Memoir of the 20th Century, centers around a failing college student, Billy Radd, an atypical hero in a coming-of-age tale of romance and difficult complications.

As a late 1960s draft-dodging college student in northern Ohio, Billy dates four affluent high school girls simultaneously, realizing too late that it was all a huge mistake. At the same time, Billy is asked to leave Kent State University as a student because of his failing grades from spending too much time as the lead singer of two rock bands he performs in, one in Kent and the other in his hometown of Elyria, Ohio.

Since he has flunked out of Kent State University for academic reasons, it’s recommended that Billy, described as an underachiever by a school psychologist, enroll in a remedial college-prep program at Baldwin Wallace College, closer to his hometown. Luckily, Billy’s parents are affluent enough to pay for him to attend the expensive course and take advantage of their program, teaching attendees study skills, self-motivation, and mental discipline.

At the end of the ten-week program, Billy has become a recreated man. He has learned that his future life can be under his own control. This newly acquired attitude guides his focus in a new direction. Billy Radd realizes he is responsible for his own life and can gain experience, direction, knowledge, and control over his own decisions going forward.

He then develops a keen sense of confidence, enough so that he actually convinces his conservative parents to enroll him in a Hollywood film school, allowing him to escape from his four girlfriends so he can find his personal “MacGuffin,” a deeply felt goal of discovering his one true love.

This Vietnam-era story reminds readers what it’s like to be young, reckless, and to experience freedom for the first time as an adult, while making mistakes along the way, but trying to avoid the many pitfalls of building a career and finding the girl of his dreams.

Escape From Elyria, a Memoir, clarifies the rallying cry of a generation: Sex! Drugs!! and Rock ’n Roll!!!

But Billy realizes a clear new destiny for himself: self-control and becoming the kind of individual he craves to be.