Downriver

It is obvious that Peter Collier was influenced by the upheavals of his era. This time piece is masterfully written with all of the angst of a young writer trying to achieve an identity in a time when the American identity was being torn apart. Cabell Hart, the disillusioned Berkley revolutionary, has yet to come to terms with the death of his Pop, with whom he has been ambivalent for too long, when he is thrust into an American nightmare. His sister has been raped and murdered, leaving her young son at the mercy of foster parents of questionable intent. Far from being quixotic, Cabe is reluctantly thrown into the roles of savior and hero. In his violent struggle to reclaim the last living reminder of his nuclear family, he experiences a profound personal epiphany and is in fact himself, saved. As an adolescent on the cusp of manhood, I read this book from an idealist's perspective. Now, as a grown man, I read this story from the perspective of a father protecting his own. Anyone who is intrigued by the social upheavals of the late sixties and Nixon eras will thrill in the perspective of a sensitive young radical deep inside the anarchist revolutionary movements of that time. Re-visit America-then.