Author(s): T.C. Boyle

Fiction

It is the seventies, at the height of flower power. Star has just joined Drop City, a hippie commune in sunny California devoted to peace, free love and living the simple, natural life. For Star and her companions Drop City is utopia, a community free of the restrictions of the outside world. But underneath the drugs, music and transcendent bliss, she slowly discovers tensions and sexual rivalries that threaten to split the community apart. A world away in Boynton, a tiny town in the interior of Alaska, Sess Harder, a pioneer who actually does live off the land, hunting, trapping and fishing, yearns for someone to share the harsh winters with him. He falls for Pamela, a strong young woman who has come to Boynton to seek a husband. Tired of her urban life, Pamela wants to live closer to nature, and Sess, in his log cabin in the wild, seems an ideal candidate. When the authorities threaten to close down Drop City, the hippies abandon camp and head up north to Alaska, the last frontier, a place where they can live as they choose, without fear of the authorities. But neither they nor the inhabitants of Boynton are completely prepared for each other - and as the two communities collide, unexpected friendships and dangerous enmities are born. Revealing human behaviour at its rawest, tenderest and most compelling, T.C. Boyle portrays the two communities in vivid detail, bringing them together in a dramatic conclusion. Epic and gripping, this is a magnificent novel from one of America