Its All a Kind of Magic: The Young Ken Kesey, by Rick Dodgson. © 2013, University of Wisconsin Press. Hardcover, 256 pages. Retail: 26.95.

Ken?Kesey, author of counterculture classics One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion, has been called by some the father of the hippie movement of the 1960s. Some of his more infamous friends included Neal Cassady and Timothy Leary, and the drug-fueled parties at Penny Lane and later La Honda, Calif., inspired the music of a young Jerry Garcia. In 1964, Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters boarded the bus Further for a cross-country trip immortalized by Tom Wolfe in 1968s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. But Rick Dodgson goes back to the beginning in a book that charts Keseys life from his childhood on the fringes of the Great Depression through the writing of his famous novels.

Dodgsons book began as a dissertation for his Ph.D. in history. He first interviewed Kesey at his home near Eugene in 1999, and had access to all of Keseys papers and journals, both at the Pleasant Hill farm and in Eugene at the University of Oregon library. Dodgson also conducted extensive interviews with Keseys family and friends. Its All a Kind of Magic covers Keseys early years in Eugene, the magic shows that helped him pay his way through college, his attempts to act and write in Hollywood, and his participation in VA-funded research on LSD and other psychedelic drugs during his time at Stanford University that formed the basis for Cuckoos Nest.

Kesey was a charismatic figure leading a charismatic life, and few who fell within his sphere of influence could resist his charm. Its All a Kind of Magic tells Keseys story from the point of view of those who knew him best. Dodgsons biography places Kesey in context with the people, places and influences that shaped America in the 1960s.