In 1960, a group of friends are plucked from their sixth grade classroom
in privileged Great Neck, Long Island and confronted for the first time
with the horrors of the Holocaust. They hear a challenge from the past,
a cry from history to set the world on a better course; but it is the
murder of a much-loved older brother during Mississippi's Freedom Summer
that makes their mission clear.
From the front line of the civil rights movement to Andy Warhol's New
York art scene, from comic book superheroes to the violent maelstrom of
the Weather Underground, Great Neck immerses us in a charged time
not so long ago, and illuminates the lives of those who were shaped by
its energies and ideals. Vigorous, funny, profound and altogether
gripping, it is a masterpiece of contemporary literature.