Drop City
"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. The novel opposes two groups of characters: Sess Harder, his wife, Pamela, and other young Alaskans who are already successfully homesteading in the wilderness, and the brothers and sisters of "Drop City," led by Norm Sander and three idealistic emigres from the east coast, Star, her boyfriend, Marco, and Ronnie. As these two communities collide, unexpected friendships and dangerous enmities are born as everyone struggles with the bare essentials of life: love, nourishment and a roof over one's head."--BOOK JACKET.
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What Hacker News says
- If you don't mind fiction, I can recommend Drop City by T.C. Boyle. It's about a hippie commune moving from California to a remote town in Alaska.
- One worthwhile vantage point from which to understand the foul and self-serving element of the 1960s in California is Joan Didion’s essay collection The White Album, published 1979. And in particular the title essay, which deals partly with the Manson cult.
It is a fascinating book, and she is such a singular writer, with a different and unique viewpoint of the 60s (being older than the hippies and not temperamentally suited to an optimistic worldview anyway), that it is completely worth your time.
Another reference point, come to think of it, is T.C. Boyle’s novel Drop City, which also features an idealistic commune that starts out in California and relocates (kids and all) to a remote place once the Man catches up to them. It also does not end well.
(Edited to add: not knocking the 60s as a whole, or optimism, or hippies, each of which has/have their place in my heart.)
