The ticket agent at America's fastest rollercoaster only glanced at the hundred-dollar bill in the black man's hand. "I can't break a C-note," he said, waving the money off in a dismissive manner. "You must be crazy." The man's nieces and nephews, standing in line chattering about who would be brave enough to ride in the coaster's front car, now came to a collective silence.

"Crazy?" Sam snapped in an irritated voice that made the elderly white man look up. Once his eyes met Sam's, he knew immediately he had made a terrible mistake. "Oh, they will ride," Sam told the unsuspecting attendant. "Even if everybody has to ride, they're gonna get on!" With that, Uncle Sam proceeded to summon every child within the sound of his voice to line up for a "free" ride on The Bobs, Riverview Amusement Park's most prestigious rollercoaster. The year was 1962, and even though Sam was in a predominately white amusement park in an all-white Chicago neighborhood, he refused to consider "no" an option. If the man couldn't give Sam change, then all the kids, black and white, would ride until the money was exhausted. He'd show the man "crazy".

Sam watched as the harried ticket agent hustled to handle the onslaught of young riders, sweating profusely in the July sun as he issued 40-cent tickets with one hand and kept a running total of Sam's change with the other. Sam's mood eventually relaxed, and after several minutes of watching the poor man struggle, he was convinced he had effectively made his point. He finished his box of popcorn and joined his young relatives as they got back in line to ride The Bobs once again. As he passed the attendant, Sam quietly told the man he should continue to let the kids who wanted to ride do so, but that he could keep the last twenty dollars for himself.

"There were no such things as obstacles when it came to Sam Cooke," his oldest niece Gwen remembered with a comfortable smile. "As kids we knew that whenever Sam was in charge, things would always work out fine." Her cousin, Sam's nephew Eugene, added "We never doubted it for a second; Sam was going to find a way. If we didn't know anything else, we knew that."

Sam Cooke lived his life much like that July afternoon incident at Riverview Park—refusing to let anyone or anything deny his true passion. He was driven by a determination to excel that was instilled in him at an early age, and in Sam's eyes, family took a back seat to no one. These same sentiments are echoed continuously throughout "Our Uncle Sam: The Sam Cooke Story From His Family's Perspective".

Sam adopted his winning attitude from his strict but loving father, the late Rev. Charles Cook, Sr., who taught his children to never give less than their best effort and stressed the importance of family unity.

"My mother and father were both family oriented, and they instilled in us 'all for one and one for all'," Sam's youngest sister Agnes remembers. "We were a very tight, close-knit family. If you had a problem with one of us, you had a problem with all of us."

The Sam Cooke saga is a remarkable one, and is best retold by his closest family members. "Our Uncle Sam" not only contains the intimate memories of his brothers, sister, nieces, nephews, children and stepson, it includes many never-before-seen photographs of Sam and his family.

Our Uncle Sam also explores the strange circumstances surrounding Sam's death—circumstances which never made sense to the Cook family or to fans worldwide. The book points out many of the inconsistencies in the Coroner's Inquest, and reveals an alternate account of Sam's last hours on earth that vastly differs from the "official” sequence of events.

For over 40 years music fans around the world have waited to hear the inside story. Now, their wait is over.