Wow, talk about a book that took me out of my element. Drop City is the story of a hippie commune that gets pushed out of their ranch in California and so heads north to Alaska to escape “the man” and freely live off the land. The first few chapters of this book paint a somewhat glamorous picture of hippie-dom. Free love, an eternal buzz, the beauty of brother and sister-hood… But as things progress, and as the Alaskan days grow darker and colder, the drug-induced bliss is peeled back to reveal people’s tendencies toward jealousy, greed, and selfishness. And things get messy. Train-wreck messy. Staying-up-way-past-my-bedtime-to-finish-just-one-more-chapter-messy. This was an enthralling story. My only complaint is that all the mayhem was a little too quickly and neatly resolved in the final few pages – I wouldn’t have minded a few loose ends.