A Thousand Steps
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
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.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The backdrop to this solid standalone from Edgar winner Parker, set in 1968 Laguna Beach, Calif., is the burgeoning counterculture—hippies, drugs, be-ins, and protests—but 16-year-old Matt Anthony is mostly worried about his fractured family. His dad has fled. His mom's addicted to hash and opium. His brother's fighting in Vietnam. And his sister, 18-year-old Jasmine, has gone missing, last seen at a stairway to the beach. The police, who don't take Jasmine's disappearance seriously and are busy trying to bust drug dealers, think she's just another rebellious runaway. So Matt works tirelessly to find his sister, but his plan—to canvass every house in Laguna Beach—feels more desperate than useful. He's also reluctantly roped in to help the cops investigate local drug trafficking. Parker offers a telling perspective on the people who used youth culture to traffic drugs (and much worse), but this works best as a thoughtful coming-of-age novel and a portrait of a Southern California town in the throes of substantial societal change. Crime fiction fans may just find enough to like.
