She's Gone: A Novel

It's 1969. Jolie stands on the deck of her parents' Santa Barbara home watching an uncontrolled oil spill. She's outraged and motivated to do something about it. Jolie's father may be an oil executive, but that doesn't stop her from hitchhiking to the harbor and joining an anti-oil drilling protest.
When a television broadcast shows her protesting, Jolie's father prohibits any more involvement. This fuels the fire burning inside of her, and she flees home with Will, her older, activist boyfriend. Idealistic and ready for anything, Jolie follows Will into the eye of the hurricane--the 1960s counterculture.
Thrown into an adult world, Jolie lies about her age and identity and quickly discovers that nearly everything is more complicated than it seems on the surface--Will included. In this psychological love story, Jolie's emotional and spiritual journey from California to the East Coast is one of pain, resilience, fear, and hope, as she navigates an increasingly controlling boyfriend and her own personal convictions.
She's Gone is filled with colorful settings, characters, and distinctive music of the times. Thisauthentic and heartfelt coming of age story follows a young woman's odyssey through social and political issues of the Vietnam War, an underground news press, the Socialist Movement, the resurgence of the Women's Movement and the start of the Environmental Movement. Issues that continue to be relevant today.