7/23/1965 Black River Falls makes the national news

July 23, 1965.  On this day there was a near riot in Black River Falls, Iowa, resulting in the town's only appearance on the news with Walter Cronkite.  It seems that Cliffie Sykes, the dumb-as-dirt chief of police decided to arrest every teenage boy with long hair.

That is the fictional beginning of Ticket To Ride, Ed Gorman's eighth novel about Sam McCain, lawyer and private eye, coping with life in the fifites and sixties in a small town in the midwest.  Before long there will be violence at a peace rally, and Sam will be defending a man he loathes at the request of the man's girlfriend - who used to be Sam's. 

Publisher's Weekly said: "Besides getting the pop culture of the period right, Gorman captures the baffled frustration of provincial folk who don't want to believe that things are more complicated than they look, that it's sometimes a mistake to trust people in authority"