Even though Rob and Bose Whitman are identical twins and leading- edge baby boomers, everything for them is not ditto.
Bose sprints through high school athletics, DJs a program called "Blues Before Breakfast" on the campus radio station and takes part in the protests against the war in Vietnam during the day.
Rob is crazy about baseball, has an interest in psychology, and meets Rochelle in a journalism class. Her family runs a dog kennel and it is no surprise that she becomes a legal advocate against the cruelty to animals used in laboratory testing.
In 1969, after receiving a letter that Bose is missing in action in southeast Asia, Rob and his parents are thrown into turmoil. It just did not make sense.
Rob's life moves toward increasing stability, as he becomes a licensed psychologist in Wisconsin, marries, and begins a family.
Bose's fate is still in limbo, and why is Atsuko crying during the ride home? Arguing over whether the Sixties actually comes to an end in 1974, or how to define yuppiedom, and why punks have wrapped the rally cry of peace, love, and harmony all in black, seems of little consequence or consolation to Rob who feels like his life has been bisected with his twin brother's disappearance.
The theme of divergent paths, midlife crisis, and the quest for reconciliation and convergence weaves its way through fifty years of life in America.
