Playground Zero: A Novel

(Paperback)

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Description

1968. It's the season of siren songs and loosened bonds-as well as war, campaign slogans, and assassination. When the Rayson family leaves the East Coast for the gathering anarchy of Berkeley, twelve-year-old Alice embraces the moment in a hippie paradise that's fast becoming a cultural ground zero. As her family and school fade away in a tear gas fog, the 1960s counterculture brings ambiguous freedom. Guided only by a child's-eye view in a tumultuous era, Alice could become another casualty-or she could come through to her new family, her developing life. But first, she must find her way in a world where the street signs hang backward and there's a bootleg candy called Orange Sunshine.

Reviews

2021 International Book Awards Finalist in Fiction: Literary

2021 Readers' Favorite Book Awards Finalist in Fiction: Social Issues

This intense retrospective on people yanked out of the strait-laced Fifties and tossed into a culture of anything goes will appeal to readers wanting to learn more about Berkeleys days of rage.
Historical Novels Review

Like the writing of Jodi Picoult, Sarah Relyea has the ability to build a particular drama into a compelling plot, unveiled through multiple points of view. . . .Through music, literature, and actual events, the author creates a clear picture of the 1960s, especially the tumultuous events and the free-love flower power that swept the west coast in particular. This is a powerful, historical drama. Well constructed.
Readers Favorite, five-star review

An eerily compellingdj vuof the free, wild, and jeopardy-ridden kid scene in late-1960s Berkeley. Uncanny and powerful.
Charles Degelman, Editor, Harvard Square Editions

Like a trip through the Looking Glass, Sarah Relyeas engrossing debut noveltakes you by the hand back to the sixties, where social rules were being challenged and political upheaval was the norm.
Patricia Hurtado, Brooklyn writer and journalist with Bloomberg News

A fascinating exploration of a strange and exciting time in US history . . . I was totally immersed in the story as Alice grows and develops in a world in which freedom has many different outcomes.
NetGalley

Author Bio

Sarah Relyea is the award-winning author of Playground Zero, a coming-of-age novelaboutthe 1960s, and Outsider Citizens: The Remaking of Identity in Wright, Beauvoir, and Baldwin, a work of literary criticism. Sarah grew up in Berkeley during the counterculture movement of the 1960s.She has taught at universities in New York and Taiwan. Sarahlives in Brooklyn, New York,and continues to spend time in Northern California.