If You Want to Get to Heaven

By Gary McKinney

If You Want to Get to Heaven is a courageous young man’s rock ‘n roll journey. A quest for love, freedom, family and music—and a wild-ass ride in a wheelchair! The real stuff, straight from the heart.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0972370609
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: Kearney Street Books
• Length: 286 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.

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Author's synopsis

From the jacket blurb of "If You Want to Get to Heaven": It?s 1973 and Rick Harrington has just earned a degree in music. His teachers tell him he?s got golden ears. Play a jazz chord and he?d whistle the inside voicings with ease?if he could only whistle. Hard to do when you?ve got cerebral palsy. Hard to get anything going when the world won?t cut you a break. But his break finally comes when his brother Kid, a rock-and-roller, needs a soundman and Rick is swept into a rip-roaring rock-and-roll circus of sex, drugs, and ambition. ?Not because of your condition or anything,? a mysterious beauty says to him in the midst of a post-concert bash, ?but this doesn?t seem like your scene.? ?What other scene do I have?? he asks her. Kid Chrysler and the Cruisers are his shot at life in the real world?though unreal might better define the lifestyle of a rock band. Confronted the next day by a bathroom door too narrow for a wheelchair, Kid tells Rick ?The old family tradition, bro. Time to hop aboard the Chrysler Express.? He?s carried on his brother?s back again. When will it stop? When will Rick?s talent, not his brother?s interventions, be enough to open a door of opportunity? IF YOU WANT TO GET TO HEAVEN is about brothers in harmony and discord, about the triumphs and tragedies of a rock-and-roll band on the road, and about one very special man you won't forget.