Swept Away #01: Gone with the Wish

Louise Greenspan, a flower child of the 1980s, longs for the days before she was born, when freedom of expression was in and alligator shirts were out. Through the personals, she corresponds with Sergeant Pepper, her ""kindred sixties spirit,'' with ``a tie-dyed soul just like hers.'' She scorns the advances of a boy named Ethan, though being near him has a ``weird effect on hersort of like being stung by a spark of static electricity.'' Lou uses a computer to go back in time to Woodstock, where she finds a doctor to deliver a hippie couple's baby. She travels to her own hometown, and meets her mother as a teenager. Since the boy her mother loves isn't her father, Lou has to get her parents together and returns to the 1980s in time to fall in love with Ethan (a.k.a. Sergeant Pepper, a.k.a. the hippie couple's baby, grown-up). One of two inaugural titles in the Swept Away series, this is as inane and predictable as they come. It's far too long for such a silly plot, and stuffed with platitudes besides. (12-up)