Playground Zero

Its the season of siren songs and loosened bondsas well as war, campaign slogans, and assassination. At the height of the Vietnam War protests, Washington lawyer Tom Rayson uproots his family for the freewheeling city of Berkeley. While Tom pursues a romance with a sexy colleague in the Marin County woods, Marian joins a peace party thats running a Black Panther for president and meets the Berkeley revolution. But for young Alice, her parents liberating forays become a blind leap in a city marked by beauty and social changeand for a girl, thats no Summer of Love. Feeling estranged from her family, Alice embraces the moment and falls in with Jim and Valerie Dupres. Jim and Valerie have been learning the ropes on Telegraph Avenue, cadging meals at a nearby communal house and camping out in Peoples Park. Soon theyre confronting National Guardsmen. As family and school fade away in a tear-gas fog, Alice feels an ambiguous freedom. Caught up in a rebellion that feels equally compelling, scary, and absurd, Alice could become a casualtyor she could defy the odds and become her own person. One thing is sure: theres no going back.