Cool's Ridge

When 25-year-old Liz Stillwell arrives at Cool's Ridge, a 'communal farm' in the Kittatiny Mountains of rural northwest New Jersey, she believes she has found a safe and peaceful place. As the sun sets, the eight yojng adults who share the farmhouse sit down to a supper of fresh garden vegetables and strawberries. But despite the country setting, an air of tension that is political as well as sexual, pervades the farm. It is June of 1972. There's a war on in Vietnam and all of the group members are anti-war activists.

Liz has come to Cool's Ridge in pursuit of her lover, the enigmatic Skip Loomis, She realizes that Skip is often emotionally distant but she puzzles over why. Is it, as Skip complains, because she's too intense? Or is their relationship clouded by its beginnings? Liz and Skip met on the Princeton campus, on the day when John Stillwell's roommate committed suicide. This appalling event seems to have triggered John's breakdown and his gradual and frightening descent into schizophrenia.

Liz's attachment to her sick brother and her attempts to protect him, create a shadowy area in her relations with her lover. While her father detaches himself from the family to begin a new life, Liz assumes increasing responsibility for Jon, The situation reaches a crisis one Fourth of July weekend when Skip's socially prominent parents arrive at that same time that John appears, AWOL from his hospital.

Detachment versus involvement, passion, and risk is a theme mirrored by the novel's other dominant character, Leonard Gannet. A member of the group and editor of their small weekly newspaper, he finds himself unwillingly attracted to Liz despite the fact that he is "locked into a marriage the way we're locked into the Vietnam war, by pride and deception." Leonard, Skip, and Liz, the others of the group (Shauna, Alice, Wayne, May, and Sal) are embarked on a wistful search for emotional and intellectual asylum in a nation that is violently divided on the meaning and necessity of the war in South-East Asia.

URSULA PERRIN was born in Berlin, Germany, and grew up in Amsterdam, New York, and Ridgewood, Queens. After graduating from Smith College, she taught history at the Chapin School in New York City. The author of five previous novels, she is also an active environmentalist and co-founder of the Paulinskill-Pequest Watershed Association. She is married to Mark Perrin, MD., and is mother to Tom (a chef), Chris (a singer), and Nick, (a Presbyterian minister). The Perrins live in rural Northwest New Jersey and Gay's Island, Cushing, Maine.