Drop City
Book description
It is 1970, and a down-at-the-heels California commune devoted to peace, free love, and the simple life has decided to relocate to the last frontier-the unforgiving landscape of interior Alaska-in the ultimate expression of going back to the land. Armed with the spirit of adventure and naive optimism, the inhabitants…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Drop City as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
T.C. Boyle is the master of writing novels in which two seemingly disparate storylines are headed for a collision course.
In this novel, he writes about the inhabitants of Drop City, a drugged-out hippy commune in California. And, in alternating chapters, he writes about the inhabitants of a remote village in Alaska, who are struggling to prepare for winter. These two storylines may seem to have nothing to do with one another until you realize both worlds are at a breaking point.
Finding out how these two casts of characters would eventually collide kept me up way past my bedtime…
From Buffy's list on living that 60s cult/commune life.
This novel encapsulates my two loves; a fracturing society and the wilderness. Partially inspired by a real 60s commune, the storyline takes a turn when its free-loving hippies are ousted from their eternal summer of love. Lured by the promise of land and lack of authoritarian oversight, they pack up a school bus and head for Alaska. The characters quickly find that living truly ‘back to nature’ is much harsher and more deadly than they had imagined. Their struggle to adapt makes for unmissable scenes of both man’s inhumanity and solidarity.
Drop City shines where misogyny meets free love and…
From Sarah's list on surviving in the wild, no matter the cost.
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