ISBN 0-553-37330-7 (US trade pbk)

"It's 1967 and something new is sweeping across America: good vibes, bad vibes, lab-designed drugs, psychedelic music, free love, dropouts, bikers, flower children, an age of innocence, a time of danger, the Summer of Love. The Summer of Love is San Francisco, where would-be flower children flock to join the hip elite, where squares cruise the streets to view the human zoo.

"Lost in the wonders of these strange and miraculous days is fourteen-year-old Susan Stein, alias Starbright, who has run away from the straight suburbs of Cleveland to find love. Her path will cross that of a peculiar young man named Chiron Cat's Eye in Draco, who has traveled farther than she would ever believe possible, from a world she would not recognize. Chiron has come from the future on a mission that is, despite the shining technotoys of his age, nearly impossible. He must find one fancifully named hippie among the swirling psychedelic swarm in the Haight-Ashbury -- a needle in a cosmic haystack whose fate will affect that of many generations to come." [jacket blurb, US pbk, 1994]

"Heartfelt but devoid of flower-child sentimentality, hard-nosed without being cynical." --Norman Spinrad.

"Lisa Mason has certainly done her homework. This is the San Francisco which I remember. And is the character of Leo Gorgon based on Emmett Grogan?" --Henry W.Targowski (in Mark/Space , 1997).

Recommended.