{"product_id":"light-years-book-chris-rush-9780374294410","title":"The Light Years","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eLambda Literary Award Finalist |\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e Editors' Choice\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eNamed a best book of 2019 by \u003ci\u003eParade\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Light Years\u003c\/i\u003e is a joyous and defiant coming-of-age memoir set during one of the most turbulent times in American history\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\"This stunningly beautiful, original memoir is driven by a search for the divine, a quest that leads Rush into some dangerous places . . . \u003ci\u003eThe Light Years\u003c\/i\u003e is funny, harrowing, and deeply tender.\" --Kate Tuttle, \u003ci\u003eThe\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eL.A. Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\"Rush is a fantastically vivid writer, whether he's remembering a New Jersey of 'meatballs and Windex and hairspray' or the dappled, dangerous beauty of Northern California, where 'rock stars lurked like lemurs in the trees.' Read if you loved... \u003ci\u003eJust Kids\u003c\/i\u003e by Patti Smith.\" \u003ci\u003e--\u003c\/i\u003eLeah Greenblatt, \u003ci\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\"As mythic and wild with love, possibility, and danger as the decades it spans, you'll read \u003ci\u003eThe Light Years\u003c\/i\u003e with your breath held. Brutal, buoyant and wise to the tender terror of growing up, Chris Rush has written a timeless memoir of boyhood in the American wilderness.\" --Emma Cline, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Girls\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Chris Rush was born into a prosperous, fiercely Roman Catholic, New Jersey family. But underneath the gleaming mid-century house, the flawless hostess mom, and the thriving businessman dad ran an unspoken tension that, amid the upheaval of the late 1960s, was destined to fracture their precarious facade.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e His older sister Donna introduces him to the charismatic Valentine, who places a tab of acid on twelve-year-old Rush's tongue, proclaiming: \"This is sacrament. You are one of us now.\"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e After an unceremonious ejection from an experimental art school, Rush heads to Tucson to make a major drug purchase and, still barely a teenager, disappears into the nascent American counterculture. Stitching together a ragged assemblage of lowlifes, prophets, and fellow wanderers, he seeks kinship in the communes of the west. His adolescence is spent looking for knowledge, for the divine, for home. Given what Rush confronts on his travels--from ordinary heartbreak to unimaginable violence--it is a miracle he is still alive.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Light Years\u003c\/i\u003e is a prayer for vanished friends, an odyssey signposted with broken and extraordinary people. It transcends one boy's story to perfectly illustrate the slow slide from the optimism of the 1960s into the darker and more sinister 1970s. This is a riveting, heart-stopping journey of discovery and reconciliation, as Rush faces his lost childhood and, finally, himself.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49514376593681,"sku":"CIN0374294410G","price":4.47,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50930634031377,"sku":"CIN0374294410VG","price":4.02,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0374294410.jpg?v=1750739861","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/products\/light-years-book-chris-rush-9780374294410","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}