The year 1970 ushered out a decade of events that some thought would tear America apart. An unpopular war in Viet Nam followed her into the new decade like the shadow of a bad omen. Riots in every major city in the North and violent peace rallies in the South divided America along racial lines. The assassination of three men many considered the greatest leaders America had ever produced raised the question if America’s best days were behind her. This is the world John Carter would enter when he graduated from high school. John had watched the changing of America with anger, both on television and played out live in his recently integrated high school. He had spent the past two years working after school and weekends to help his mother while his father served a two-year prison sentence, and now his dad was coming home. John was confronted with a decision about his immediate future. College was all but out of the question. Factory work was more likely. Then his escape was provided when he overheard a conversation between two friends. He would “Join the Navy and See the World”—a world he thought would be void of violence, hatred, and racism and full of fun and adventure. What he didn’t expect was more responsibility and greater challenges than he had ever faced. The lessons he would learn during his three-month “Maiden Cruise” would come in faraway places and from the most unlikely people, causing him to reconsider his ideas about race, people, and the country he had learned to hate.
