Romantic History

Two spectacularly mismatched young people meet at a halfway house in a Seattle suburb in 1971. Paul Siebert is a reporter, a shy, depressive Vietnam veteran, already chastened by the blows life has dealt him. Maggie Ryan is a wild child, a rape victim, a musician, an armed robber, determined to live life to the fullest. They have no business falling in love, no plausible future together. But whatever initially connects them, though it often flickers, refuses to die. Over the next 35 years, as each separately tries to make a settled life, their attraction never stops being an inspiration, and a danger. In the tradition of John Fowles' "The French Lieutenant's Woman," Michael Harris' "Romantic History" balances the claims of individual desire and family values, recklessness and prudence, idealism and delusion, the safe and the forbidden. Ranging from Southeast Asian war zones to a hippie encampment on Crete, from Spokane to Los Angeles, from newsrooms to jails, from the foot of Mount Shasta to the down-and-out streets of Boston, full of vivid and memorable minor characters, this novel follows the evolution of two souls who demand more than the world may be willing to give.