A Thousand Steps by T Jefferson Parker
9781250793539
361 Pages
Publisher: Macmillian-Tor / Forge
Release Date: January 11, 2022
Fiction, General Fiction, Historical Fiction, 1960s, Drugs, Sex, Abduction, Family Dynamics
It is 1968 and Matt Anthony is sixteen years old living in Laguna Beach, California. His older brother, Kyle, is serving in Vietnam and his sister, Jazz is missing. His mother becomes distant since becoming addicted to drugs leaving Matt to fend for himself. Matt uses his newspaper route to buy food and clothes. They are being evicted and his mother finds them another place, but Matt isn’t happy about where is it and what it is. He spends most of his time looking for his sister and worrying about his brother who is due to come home soon.
This book was slow paced and mostly dragged with Matt spending most of the book looking for his sister, getting mugged and beat up. The characters were somewhat developed, and it was written in the third person point of view. I enjoyed reading the historical references to Timothy Leary, The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, Mystic Arts World, and Laguna Beach during that time but for me, the book fell flat. It was very slow and could probably cut out 100 pages to move the story along faster. I was drawn to the cover and wish the book was better.
