The Outside Lands: A Novel

San Francisco, 1968: Jeannie and Kip are bereaved and adrift, their mother dead under mysterious circumstances, and their father—a decorated World War II veteran—consumed by guilt and losing control of his teenage children. Kip, a dreamer and swaggerer prone to small-time trouble, enlists with the Marines to fight in Vietnam. Jeannie finds a seemingly safe haven in early marriage and motherhood.

But when Kip is accused of a terrible military crime, Jeannie is seduced—sexually, emotionally, p...