Supermen — Ken Kuhlken

Supermen is book one of For America, a two-family saga of suspense and mystery. Set in the long aftermath of WW II, the novel dramatically explores the failure of traditional beliefs and political systems and the rise and fall of counter cultures and sects. Folk music, hippie and Jesus Freak communes, the Manson family, the People’s Temple, Biblical prophecy, and spiritualist cults all participate in the story.In Supermen, Otis Otterbach, born the day the atom bomb destroys Hiroshima, is mentored by his grandma, a poet and painter who teaches him to believe in the implausible, and his father who coaches him in baseball so well, he becomes a big-league pitching prospect. But wicked conflicts visit in the person of Cynthia Jones, mother of Casey, Otis’s best friend and catcher. Either paranoid, prophetic, or both, Cynthia believes that Henry Tucker, adopted son of her sister, will use his prodigious scientific mind and occult knowledge to abet the downfall of western civilization.She calls Henry Tucker the Enemy. And after she learns that Otis is related to President James A. Garfield, whom she argues would have become even greater than Lincoln had he not been assasinated, she chooses Otis to help Casey to stop the Enemy and thereby save America