A wonderfully comic and moving novel about the interwoven lives of a group of Midwestern grad students who, forty years after they stumbled into the political fray of the 1960s, stumble onto the fact that they were under surveillance.
At the center is Anka, a professor at a university in Ohio who receives an unsolicited Freedom of Information file charting her younger life as part of an eccentric crew who came together around politics and passion. She's plunged into suspicion (who sent the file and why?) but also into rollicking memories of her compatriots at the time: the sweet young priest who was her protector and secret crush; 'the Farmer,' the only married man among them; the gay poet named Noble and his intimate, the black professor of Victorian studies; and Bernstein, who yearned to start again in the promised land of Israel. Filled with the rich details of the personal and political actions that solidified the group for a time and then splintered it in the 1970s, the plot is animated by Anka's desires both past and present - for true intimacy in her life, academic abundance, and a better America. And then comes a surprising new development in the group's lifelong story: the unfolding mystery of one of their number, who went underground way back then and only now resurfaces.
Wise, funny, and written in quicksilver prose, The Red Squad reminds us how relevant the lessons of the past remain today and brings us a timeless message of the bonds of community and hope.
Genre: Literary Fiction
At the center is Anka, a professor at a university in Ohio who receives an unsolicited Freedom of Information file charting her younger life as part of an eccentric crew who came together around politics and passion. She's plunged into suspicion (who sent the file and why?) but also into rollicking memories of her compatriots at the time: the sweet young priest who was her protector and secret crush; 'the Farmer,' the only married man among them; the gay poet named Noble and his intimate, the black professor of Victorian studies; and Bernstein, who yearned to start again in the promised land of Israel. Filled with the rich details of the personal and political actions that solidified the group for a time and then splintered it in the 1970s, the plot is animated by Anka's desires both past and present - for true intimacy in her life, academic abundance, and a better America. And then comes a surprising new development in the group's lifelong story: the unfolding mystery of one of their number, who went underground way back then and only now resurfaces.
Wise, funny, and written in quicksilver prose, The Red Squad reminds us how relevant the lessons of the past remain today and brings us a timeless message of the bonds of community and hope.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Used availability for Esther Broner's The Red Squad