Fiction

摘要

Set in the 1980s, this coming-of-age tale features Rebecca Silver, a freshman at Berkeley and daughter of Ira Silver, publisher of an influential radical newspaper. Her first 18 years have been a continuing series of causes, rallies, and the pieties of leftist politics. The summer after her freshman year, her parents plan something different, signing her up to be a counselor at Llamalo, a Colorado wilderness camp run by her older cousin Caleb. There she finds her troubled childhood friend David, who has recently quit high school and come to Llamalo believing that he has discovered a path for his own life in the camp's radical simplicity. Slowly, the two become involved, and Rebecca begins to discover an identity outside of political activism. As summer ends, a crisis erupts when Donnie, the son of the rancher from whom Caleb bought Llamalo, returns. Donnie believes that Caleb stole the ranch from his family and attempts to reclaim the land. VERDICT While politics plays a major role in this story, Abel's first foray into fiction is not a political novel. Rather, it is a generous, thoughtful view of youthful passion and idealism seen through the lens of age, as its characters struggle with questions of personal authenticity.