Edgar Award–winner Clark (Mr. White's Confession) abandons the psychological murder mystery genre of his earlier work to plumb the emotional depths and dangers of young love and mature infidelity in this literary fiction set in 1968 Minnesota. Clark rambles through the hearts and minds of Bill Lowry, 17, and Emily Byrne, 16, in wordy, reflective fashion, treating teenage passion with serious intensity. Bill's divorced, politically active mother, Jane, is a delegate to the Democratic convention in Chicago. The riots there and Humphrey's selection as the Democratic candidate find her disenchanted with the system and skeptical about the chances for an early end to U.S. participation in the Vietnam war. Bill will be graduating from high school next year and the specter of the draft hangs over him as he begins his romance with Emily by letter. Emily's parents, Edward and Virginia, are a loving, Catholic, middle-class couple whose comfortable marriage contains neither pain nor passion. As Emily and Bill's romance progresses from letters to coffeehouse dates to surprisingly mature sex, Clark effectively evokes the youthful yearnings for freedom and a return to nature that characterized the '60s. Swept away by their love, Bill convinces Emily that their only chance to remain together is to run away to the north woods of Minnesota and live off the land. When the two teenagers disappear, their parents react to the stress in decidedly different ways. Readers will be drawn in by Clark's languid rhythms and his careful period detail, and the novel's tragic conclusion will serve baby boomers as a bittersweet reminder of a time when the nation was jerked painfully from adolescence into adulthood. (July)
