Robert Gover

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Robert Gover grew up in an endowed orphanage (Girard College in Philadelphia), received a BA in economics from the University of Pittsburgh, worked as a journalist, became a best-selling novelist at age 30, lived most of his life in California, and now lives in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. He has written over a dozen books, including ten novels. His first novel, One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding, remains a cult classic. Gover's books were restored to print by author Christopher Klim. Klim edited his final trio of books.

The Passionate State of Mind

(ISBN 9781933435343, 228 pgs)

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The international cult classic that changed the literary world. See what happens when a young black prostitutes hooks up with a preppy white boy for the weekend. This edition includes Legacy Classic's group discussion points.

from One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding

Immediately, right off the bat, without further ado, here and now, I wish to say that much of what happened to me that fateful weekend is completely unprintable, since it happened with a lady (colored) of ill repute. So all pornography-seekers are warned to seek elsewhere. I wish to make that point quite clear before proceeding further.

(Especially since Dad is chairman of our town’s obscenity board so is well acquainted with the general subject and has impressed upon me the immense harm obscenity might do this great nation.) (Not that I’m a prude. Far from it! But nor am I a conveyer of illicit images and user of four-letter words and the mails to defraud.)

I mean, I plan to keep the telling of these unlikely events on as high a literary plain as I’m able, fully aware of my own shortcomings as I attempt this. After all, I’m a college sophomore, not a paid professional writer. You may ask why I didn’t tell my experience to a paid professional ghost writer and have him write it for me. Well, I have a very good reason for that. I mean, for why I didn’t do that. You see, I wish to remain anonymous for reasons which may or may not become clear to the reader, but are indeed clear to me. Only my legal initials will be used, but lots of others go by the same initials, so you’ll never track me down from them. ...

In this revised and updated edition, best-selling author explains the correlation between the economy and the planets in a broad sweeping look at economic history and the astrological indicators. Includes many charts and graphs.

from Time and Money: The Economy and the Planets

I want to begin with the most recent event which has altered the USA’s economic position in the community of nations. Astrologically it marks the first manifestation of Pluto’s return to where it was when the 13 colonies, under British rule, were embroiled in the French and Indian War. The aftermath of that war became the years of turmoil and chaos leading to the American Revolution. Pluto takes an average of 248 years to orbit the Sun, so with the attack we now refer to simply as 911, we entered a second cycle in US history of Pluto in the wintry signs.


To recap: On the morning of September 11, 2001, hijacked airliners were used as bombs in suicide attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, DC when Pluto returned to where it had been for the outbreak of the French and Indian War, 12 Sagittarius, opposite the USA’s natal Uranus and Mars in Gemini.


The most telling astrological pattern at the time was an opposition of Saturn in Gemini and Pluto in Sagittarius. Uncle Sam’s natal Uranus and Mars in Gemini were impacted by this opposition. A reading of this combination: Sam’s Uranus and Mars under affliction from Saturn and Pluto brings explosive (Mars), unprecedented surprises (Uranus), suffering and frustration (Saturn) leading to huge transformations (Pluto). ...

The Passionate State of Mind

(ISBN 9781933435367, 356 pgs)

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Reflections on the Human Conidition by Eric Hoffer

(ISBN 1933435127, 256 pgs)

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Twelve-year-old group home escapee Jane Doyle cons 63 year-old widower Dick Steel into a cross-country drive in order to flee an overseas child sex slavery ring.

from On the Run with Dick and Jane

Shortly before I brought home my long lost, politically radical, derelict and psychotic brother Robert, I was lonely. Shortly after bringing him home, I was madly in love with a girl 34 years younger than myself and my personal security guard was trying to kill me. Meanwhile, it seemed that brother Robert had emerged from his dungeon of tragedy into the bright sunshine of good fortune. I am not a superstitious man but it had me wondering if this was some kind of transmigration of souls. Had my brother and I somehow exchanged personal destinies?

These changes in my life began on a Friday afternoon in February of 2008 when I got a call from a private psychiatric facility in Camarillo. A female voice identifying herself as Dr. Mary Grace said they planned to discharge my brother Robert this Monday morning, “If you will agree to pick him up here and provide him a place to live while he gets back on his feet.” ...

The story of two brothers—inseparable as children—whose adult paths through life could hardly be more different. They reunite late in their lives, one a multi-millionaire, the other coming from skid row. Their reunion brings surprising consequences for both.

from Two Brothers

This all began eight days after my wife, Mae, died. The urn containing her ashes now sat beside me in my Dodge van. I was leaving North Carolina for California where my two sons and their families would scatter Mae’s remains on the waters of the Pacific. After that, I had no idea what I would do with the rest of my life, or even why I should go on living now that I was sixty-three years old, financially ruined, alone, and homeless. Together, Mae and I had been a cornucopia of bountifulness and joy. Alone, I was a puddle of self-pity and pain.

Official cause of death was heart failure, after a series of increasingly critical heart problems during recent yeas, beginning just after I took early retirement. I could not return to the company, un-retired, so my world was blizzards of bill collectors and depressingly bleak prospects. I could have kept my job at Grandmother’s Home but without Mae, it would only amplify the hurt. Her absence pained and haunted me like an amputated limb. I needed time alone to grieve, make peace with her absence, commune with her shade or whatever—the Mae that filled my heart. And I needed my family, the familiar people and places of my homeland, California. ...

Reflections on the Human Conidition by Eric Hoffer

(ISBN 9781933435251, 380 pgs)

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Reflections on the Human Conidition by Eric Hoffer

(ISBN 9781933435398, 204 pgs)

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One of Gover’s key novels, Poorboy at the Party, runs against the publicly sold and traded American Dream, where a party among privileged kids breaks down into a orgy of sex and destruction.

from Poorboy at the Party

I OFTEN MEET people who ask me why it happened. Who say they could understand kids from the slums behaving that way, but the sons and daughters of our best families—why them?

Well, I find that a funny question. And a bit dangerous. The kind who ask it usually think I’m somebody I’m not, really. They assume that since I was there the night it happened, and since I’m now a total and irrevocable dropout, beach boy, bum, beatnik, student of life—they assume I must be a fallen angel out of the overprivileged class. Which I’m not. Not by a long shot.

I’m poor dirt farmer white-trash with origins in the country slum and prep school in an orphanage. I went to the party as an outsider, the guest of a guy whose presence there was like an atmospheric pressure, and in some witch­crafty way, brought on the storm.

Or was it me who brought it on? No, no—to give credit where credit is due, it was Arnold, for even I was just another one of the ingredients he added to the party, and all I brought to it was my poorboy’s spooky prejudice against the rich and powerful. ...

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