PUNK IS COMING — but it’s not here yet ...

It’s the fall of 1976, and 20-year-old guitarist Daniel Travers’s life is a mess. His band, the Killjoys, is essentially going nowhere; the pills he’s popping are making him crazy; and the voices batting around his head have him convinced that he’s a bleedin’ quadropheniac. On top of everything, what he calls the Real Me, his true self, has disappeared—and he’s lost without it.

Then the phone rings, a new agent offering a weeklong gig at the exotic Mai Tai Hotel, in Puente Harbor, Wash. Told by the agent that Jimi Hendrix and Heart started out at the Mai Tai, Daniel sees the weeklong gig as his best chance to get the Killjoys on the road to success—and also to ditch his own troubles.

Getting in Tune is a novel that captures the fire of the rock ’n’ roll dream as well as the dream that music can transcend chaos, that it can bring perfection to our daily mess. And for Daniel, it’s about finding—as his unlikely guru, The Who’s Pete Townshend, whispers to him—the Universal Chord, the perfect set of notes that blesses life with essential harmony.

A book full of the low grit of small-club rock ’n’ roll and the high spirit the music soars upon, Getting in Tune is an exciting read. Step in, can you hear it? The band is tuning up right now....