Cruel Beautiful World

It's 1969, and 16-year-old Lucy loves dangly earrings, hippie bell-bottoms, and Love's Baby Soft shampoo for her golden curls. But the naïve sophomore hates high school with a passion. Her charismatic, hip English teacher William makes it bearable, seeing potential in her creative writing and making her feel special. They become intimate, and Lucy is titillated by sneaking around. When his antiestablishment, antiwar stance runs afoul of the school administration, William takes a job at an alternative school in rural Pennsylvania, and Lucy runs off with him. Discovering Lucy's farewell note, Iris, her elderly adoptive mother, and Lucy's straitlaced older sister, Charlotte, immediately call the police, only to be met with indifference. Leavitt's (Is This Tomorrow; Pictures of You) 12th novel tracks Lucy's experience, from her immediate misgivings upon seeing the remote, dilapidated house that William rented, to her loneliness, frustration, and growing awareness of William's increasing paranoia, all chronicled in her journal. From Charlotte's perspective, we see the terrible impact Lucy's disappearance has on her and her mother.