The high ideals and inevitable compromises of the 1960s form the background to this acclaimed novel. Phoebe O'Connor, eighteen years old in the summer of 1978, is too young to know the 1960s, but old enough to feel the anxiety of their influence. She is obsessed by the memory of her charismatic older sister, Faith, a flower child who died in Italy in 1970. Searching for the truth about Faith's death and life, Phoebe retraces her steps across Europe to the very place where she died. Her search yields more complex and disturbing revelations than she had wished for--about her sister and the generation she emblematized.