Marks

Sex Drugs and Bodyslams!
Professional Wrestling, Race Relations, and the 1960's Counter-Culture Collide

Thom Kincannon has reached the final day of closing out the contents of his late father's house. But an unexpected find of a trunk in the attic brings a previously unknown manuscript to light. Despite working against a deadline, Thom is drawn into the world created by the author of the writing - a world of physical and psychological conflict.

The year is 1969; the backdrop is the dramatic societal changes of the decade; and the stages are the professional wrestling arenas where men and women put on exhibitions of strength, athletic prowess, and acts of violence. Marks is the tale of the journeys of Clinton Long, Ivy League graduate and rebel who grapples by day with questions of philosophy and ethics, and by night with men in tights under stage lights. Burned out at the age of 30, he seeks one last hurrah, one last huge payday before he escapes the theatrical world of pretend violence forever. But an adversary has crossed the line into real violence while a deadly secret he keeps may have been discovered, and with it his life and those of others may be on the line unless he can find a way to escape while on the biggest stage of his career.

Marks bridges major cultural phenomena of the 1960's - sex, drugs, racial unrest - with the arcane world behind the scenes of professional wrestling; a dimension kept hidden with a fanatic determination by its practitioners to maintain the veneer of realism. Through the eyes of the narrator in this "story-within-a-story", readers take a journey behind the curtains and view the often rowdy, raucous and passionate lives of the men and women who entertained generations of true believers.

Marks is suggested for readers 18+, due to strong language and depiction of sexuality