Pasadena 1984: The Best and Worst of Times

New Year's 1984 brings big changes for 40-year-old Jerry O'Donnell. After a messy divorce, he quits his job as a teacher at Muir High School in Pasadena, California, to become a stockbroker.

When he leases a car, he meets his fianc嶪, Kate Cleary. The two buy a small home and have ambitious plans for the future. It is then that the AIDS epidemic raises its ugly head. After a gay friend dies of AIDS, his lover, a retired doctor, asks Jerry, the fledgling stockbroker, to help earn money for AIDS victims, but they experience strong resistance.

The Best and Worst of Times

The remaking of Los Angeles for the Summer Olympics is a high point of the year. Jerry's favorite baseball team, the Chicago Cubs, comes painfully close to making the World Series. At the same time, President Ronald Reagan remains silent in the face of the AIDS epidemic. He cuts taxes on the rich, causing the federal debt to soar. Kate worries about the collapse of the savings and loan industry.

Jerry becomes disillusioned with his company's economic philosophy of "churn and burn," selling marginal equities. When President Reagan wins an electoral landslide, it sets America's course for the next four decades. His neglect of the AIDS epidemic motivates Jerry to apply to grad school in Public Policy.

(About the Author)

Says author Henry Rex Greene: "My sixth novel, Life Could be a Dream, is a fictional version of my childhood in the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles. I now live in Henderson, Nevada, after an exciting coast-to-coast journey through America. I'm a practicing physician, specializing in hematology and oncology. I had strong involvement in shaping the hospice movement and medical ethics."