Award-winning and bestselling author Wallace Stegner takes on the hippy generation in a novel of "crackling vividness".--The New York Times Book Review. A bearded young cultist invades the lives of a retired literary agent and his wife after the death of their wayward son.
Joe Allston, the retired literary agent of Stegner's National Book Award-winning novel, The Spectator Bird, returns in this disquieting and keenly observed novel. Scarred by the senseless death of their son and baffled by the engulfing chaos of the 1960s, Allston and his wife, Ruth, have left the coast for a California retreat. And although their new home looks like Eden, it also has serpents: Jim Peck, a messianic exponent of drugs, yoga, and sex; and Marian Catlin, an attractive young woman whose otherworldly innocence is far more appealing--and far more dangerous.