Although the focus of the book is on the sixties, it opens in the fifties. Mick and Tara live on a small dairy farm in New York state. The farm doesn’t make much money. They’re poor but the children don’t realize it. There’s plenty to eat and the farm offers opportunities for exploration. Troy is an orphan. He runs away from the Catholic home where the priests beat him. He meets Mick by accident. They become fast friends and Mick’s family agrees to take in Troy. Daisy is Mick’s girl friend. He’s devastated when she moves away because her father takes a job in a plant out of the area.
I thoroughly enjoyed the opening of the book. The children were well developed and their concerns were very real. I wasn’t as impressed with the second part of the book where they moved into lives in the sixties. Mick was trying to find himself. Troy went in a different direction joining the Marines because he believed in defending the country. Daisy joined the peace corps, and Tara with a beautiful singing voice became part of the rock and roll scene with emphasis on sex and drugs.
In the second part of the book the focus is on Mick. Personally, I wanted to know more about what the other children, particularly Daisy, were doing. The other problem I had with the book was the rather pedantic treatment of racism. Sex was also overplayed in my estimation. Those were definite problems in the sixties. I know because that’s when I grew up, but other important things were happening also. It was a time when young people not immersed in the popular culture were also grappling with the changes and trying to find themselves in a less destructive way than sex and drugs. I thought the book was rather one sided.
I received this book from Net Galley for this review.
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