Bob Calverley, MSU '67
Bob Calverly, a former Free Press reporter and MSU journalism grad (Class of '67), dusts off decades-old experiences for his debut novel.
A journalism student at his alma mater, Omari Sankofa II of Detroit, reports on the newly published "Purple Sunshine" in The State News.
In the novel, band leader Jimmy “Purple” Hayes is living the high life before he’s drafted for the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, his girlfriend, Gloria, is on the run for her knowledge of who killed two policemen during a Detroit urban riot.
Calverly tells Sankofa that his book, released March 11 as a Kindle e-book, is "a Vietnam story, it’s a love story, it’s a thriller. It’s got a crime story interwoven with it."
The author, now a 72-year-old retiree in Southern California, was drafted into the Army in 1967 and served a year with the 187th Assault Helicopter Company in Tay Ninh, Vietnam. During the 1970s, he was a reporter at the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and then at the Free Press -- where his environmental accident coverage earned several awards.
Several key events in “Purple Sunshine” take place in Michigan, including at MSU. Steam tunnels under campus make an appearance, The State News article says.
Its reporter is too young to recognize the wordplay in Jimmy "Purple" Hayes, an allusion to the Jimi Hendrix acid-rock hit "Purple Haze" of 1967.
