The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 24 December 2001
by Micah Perks
Someone (was it Grace Slick who said it first?) once said that if you could remember the sixties, you weren't there. So, perhaps it is a good thing that some of the counterculture experimentalists had children who would one day grow up to tell the stories their parents wouldn't remember. Micah Perks is one such grown child. In the late 1960s, she lived in an alternative school/farm commune set up by her parents to help delinquent children. This is her memoir of those chaotic days. Perks clearly loves the people of whom she writes, most strongly her intelligent and peaceful mother. The source of the most surprises is her father, though, a wild man given to extravagant costumes, womanizing, impulsive behavior, and lying. The staff of this little school have some children, and there are some of the troubled kids staying in this little valley on the edge of the Adirondacks. Perks's writing is spare and episodic, with occasional moments of emotional insight. Overall, the story is a jumble of tales surrounding a decidedly non-traditional communal family. The family is setting out to approach modern living with alternative methods, but, like so many experiments of the time, it dissolves in personal conflict and loss. Throughout, though, Perks seems to maintain her own distance from what is going on. She says she's made the stories her own, but there seems to be a lack of emotional depth on her part. We are left to infer how these events affected her, or how they formed who she is today. The memoir is thought-provoking, but somehow lacks personal involvement. Nevertheless, an interesting bit of recent history.
See also: [Split] & [Wild Child]