LaRue Agresti BOOMER TALES: HULA HOOPS, HIPPIES, HEMP AND HIJINKS Geneva resident, LaRue Agresti lived colorfully through the Boomer Era of the seventies. Her inspiration for her book, Boomer Tales – Hula Hoops, Hippies, Hemp and Hijinks came from a pile of original letters her sister found that LaRue had written her from a hippie commune in the Florida Keys in 1973.
“They became the core of the book as Chapter 14,” says LaRue. “I literally wrote the book around them.” The book is an engaging memoir told with honesty and humor of growing up in Chicago in an eccentric Italian family, living with a mentally ill mother, sisterly bonds, the crazy rock & roll hippie life and the political and cultural turmoil of those years. It is like opening up an early 1970’s time capsule.
LaRue, who has owned her own commercial interior design firm, LaRue Design, Inc. for 25 years, has always been a writer at heart. As a child, she would write plays for the neighborhood kids to perform, and as a designer, has written several articles for the homebuilding industry. Before designing homes and commercial spaces, she studied to become a Master Barber and owned barber shops. Her creative soul is fed in all her present and past occupations.
She now lives in Geneva with her husband, Steve. She does most of her writing on their sailboat in the Virgin Islands where they go to live in the winter. “We have children and grandchildren in the area, but also in the Virgin Islands, so it is a great balance,” says LaRue.
Boomer Tales is available in paperback, Kindle and Audible through Amazon. It is LaRue’s first book, but she is presently working on a second that takes up where this one leaves off and a screenplay based on the original Florida Keys commune letters. –Mindy Kyle
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