Trance

In 1974, as the Vietnam War grinds to a close and the Nixon administration prepares to self-destruct, a tiny band of self-styled revolutionaries calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army abducts a newspaper heiress - who then stuns the world by taking the guerrilla name "Tania" and announcing that she has chosen to remain with her captors. Has she been brainwashed? Why else would she adopt the SLA's cri de guerre, "Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the People"? Why else would such a nice girl disavow her loving parents, her adoring fiance, her comfortable home? Soon most of the SLA are dead, killed in a suicidal confrontation with police in Los Angeles. Tania and her two remaining comrades go underground, where they will remain for sixteen months." "These are the months of Tania's sentimental education. In tracing this fugitive period, Trance leaps from the pages of history into satire and myth. Christopher Sorrentino's novel takes the reader across a beleaguered and divided America in the company of scam artists, visionaries, reporters, cops, cultists, and a gang of middle-class militants who typify the guiding conceit of their time, that of self-renovation.