Notes From Nethers

This memoir of being raised on a commune in the late 1960s and early 1970s is “a fascinating, evenhanded view of counterculture life” (Booklist).

Sandra Eugster’s idealistic, headstrong mother created a commune in rural Virginia that came to be known as Nethers, and it was here that Sandra spent much of her childhood. This unique, honest memoir strives to accurately depict communal living in all its complexities. An array of colorful characters drifted into the commune, and the author writes sensitively about being a child in the midst of all this. With many moments of warmth and humor as well as loss and chaos, her narrative is also an important piece of American cultural history, and the history of efforts to create a utopian society, which never seem to turn out exactly as planned.

“How can an endeavor founded on love and community traumatize a child? Sandra Eugster’s fascinating account of her mother’s radical plan to remove her children from an ordinary suburban childhood to found a commune is a riveting, evocative documentary of a time and a place—and its effect on a life.” —Jacquelyn Mitchard, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Good Son

“[A] remarkable memoir . . . Her story is compelling, incisive, and above all, candid and understanding.” —Stanley I. Kutler, author of TheWars of Watergate