by Susan Choi
First published 2004
Jenny Shimada steps off the train at Rhinecliff station and finds Rob Frazer waiting for her. The 25-year-old Japanese-American radical is on the run after committing violence against the government. Frazer offers her a job: hide three younger fugitives he has moved from California to an old farmhouse in New York's Hudson Valley. One of them is Pauline, granddaughter of a San Francisco newspaper magnate who became a national celebrity after her kidnapping. She shocked America by joining her captors and denouncing her wealthy family. Now Jenny must care for Pauline and the other two survivors of the broken revolutionary cell, Juan and Yvonne. As the group moves from their upstate hideout back toward California, isolation and paranoia eat away at their radical ideals. Jenny watches these young outsiders struggle with their fractured identities while she confronts her own uncertain future.
Genres: american-fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century, activism
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, identity-crisis
Setting: California, Hudson Valley, New York, Rhinecliff
Period: 20th Century, 21st Century
369 pages · Paperback · Harper Perennial
Content warnings: violence