Coasting America

A Journey Through 1970s America on the Edge of Change

Set in a turbulent and transformative era, Coasting America by Richard C. Stuecker follows Rob and Jake—two young men spared from the Vietnam draft—on a spontaneous cross-country road trip in a brand-new Datsun hatchback. What begins as a carefree adventure quickly becomes a kaleidoscopic exploration of a country in flux, seen through the eyes of two friends navigating their way toward adulthood.

Their story begins at Duke University and unfolds across iconic backdrops of the 1970s: anti-war protests, civil rights vigils, and countercultural moments ranging from the Newport Jazz Festival to New Orleans street life. Along the way, they meet unforgettable characters—like the eccentric Apostle of Love—and witness defining moments of a generation. From unexpected run-ins with musical legends to the quiet revelations of friendship and self-discovery, Coasting America is both a personal and historical journey.

This novel captures the raw, searching spirit of a decade marked by upheaval, idealism, and the open road. Told with warmth and wit, it’s a story of movement—not just across states, but toward something deeper: understanding, connection, and the freedom to become who you are.

Hit the road with Rob and Jake—discover Coasting America and relive a time when the country, like its youth, was finding its way.

Excerpt from the book

The Idea of Order at Ocracoke Island

We lay on our backs under a fat sun. The surf monotonous: the Outer Banks. Farther out, an undertow. Farther out still, the graveyard of the Atlantic. Ocracoke Island. A barrier island. A sandbar holding a village, motels, and wild ponies. Drifting constantly.

I had been on adventures with boys since I was 7. We killed the Krauts and the Japs on alternate days when we didn’t pick up a ballgame. The dirty Nips. Neighborhood bloodbaths and now the real possibility of killing Cong.

Now, we were two boys seeking sense under the old chaos of the sun. Jake was from Ohio. Kettering. Outside Dayton. His dream had been to pitch for Columbia but he roamed the outfield at Duke. He claimed to be a native New Yorker because he had been born on Manhattan, but his family moved when he was under a year. His mother carried Polish genes, so his eyes were deep set and his blue eyes piercing. Blond. He was shorter than I was, but he was a natural jock. Jake quarterbacked the Fairmont Firebirds but loved pitching.

I would be returning to Louisville, to the room where I grew up and my silent father and compulsive mother. I had the possibility of teaching at my Catholic prep school. I thought “big whoop.” At least Jake was heading to Germany to study Russian.

“It’s hard to make sense of where we are,” he said. He was gazing deeply into the fire as it began to flame up.

“You know where we are. Ocracoke.” I was a wise guy, sarcastic. He was being serious.

“Yeah.” I guess he didn’t find my answer funny. Jake kept looking deep into the campfire he had learned to build in scouts.

We stayed quiet for a while. We had brought an old camp quilt my grandmother had patched together to sit on and sleep under.

He flipped back over, grabbed his T-shirt—a DUKE tee he had ripped the sleeves off—and pulled it over his head and down his chest, and lay on his back again. He closed his eyes. “Of course, there is the natural order of things.”

“Yes,” I said, not knowing why but wondering where he was going with this. “The Natural Laws of things, you mean.”

“Yes, of course,” he said quickly as though my comment was in the way of where his mind was going. I felt a little diminished.

“Everything fits, of course. The natural order. Newton. Einstein. Darwin all here at the beach.”

I could understand now why Jake was a philosophy major, one of six at Duke. Something deep in him drove him to understand the world from a logical, provable stance. He wanted the evidence that what was true was true, and not some unlikely or unproveable assumption. That we had souls. That there was an afterlife. Scientists were his guides as poets and writers were mine. I was more interested in emotional experiences. Getting high, dropping acid, marching on D.C., traveling were all experiments for him that he would gauge and measure and attempt to understand. For me they were something that might connect me to something larger than myself. I was ready for a spiritual experience I kept reading and hearing about. The rumor was that Timothy Leary and other Harvard psychologists had given a group of Tibetan monks LSD and it had no effect.