A Thousand Steps
A USA Today Best of 2022, and a Los Angeles Times Bestseller!
A Thousand Steps is a beguiling thriller, an incisive coming-of-age story, and a vivid portrait of a turbulent time and place by three-time Edgar Award winner and New York Times bestselling author T. Jefferson Parker.
Laguna Beach, California, 1968. The Age of Aquarius is in full swing. Timothy Leary is a rock star. LSD is God. Folks from all over are flocking to Laguna, seeking peace, love, and enlightenment.
Matt Anthony is just trying get by.
Matt is sixteen, broke, and never sure where his next meal is coming from. Mom’s a stoner, his deadbeat dad is a no-show, his brother’s fighting in Nam . . . and his big sister Jazz has just gone missing. The cops figure she’s just another runaway hippie chick, enjoying a summer of love, but Matt doesn’t believe it. Not after another missing girl turns up dead on the beach.
All Matt really wants to do is get his driver’s license and ask out the girl he’s been crushing on since fourth grade, yet it’s up to him to find his sister. But in a town where the cops don’t trust the hippies and the hippies don’t trust the cops, uncovering what’s really happened to Jazz is going to force him to grow up fast.
If it’s not already too late.
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Community Reviews
I wish I could give this on e 4 1/2 stars...
What’s it about?
It is 1968 in Laguna Beach, California and Matt is sixteen-years-old. He is worried about his stoner mom, his brother coming home from Vietnam, and now his older sister has gone missing.
What did it make me think about?
This took me back to the 1960’s.
Should I read it?
YES! I totally enjoyed this story. This is the first book I have read by T. Jefferson Parker, but I promise it will not be my last. He somehow manages to combine a coming-of-age story with historical fiction and then turn it into a mystery-thriller. Very impressive! Sometimes the language seems stereotypical 1960’s and you wonder, “Did people really talk like that?”- but I went with it. Laguna Beach in 1968 must have been one happening, groovy place…
Quote-
“Matt thinks it’s funny how quickly the under-thirty Lagunatics like Chuck blame the cops, the government, and the very right-wing John Birch Society for whatever goes wrong in the their town. And how the cops, the government , and the John Birch Society think the young are all drug addicts, draft dodgers, sex fiends, and communists. Matt wants to side with he young and the free, of course, but he’s not sure how. Smoke pot? Wear that lame tie-dye hippie stuff?”
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