I thought this book would be a nostalgic look back at 1968 but instead it was a slog with contrived mystery and surface characters. ( )

Smooth as butter. That's how this book went down for me. Having been a teen in Southern California in the 70s, the echoes of 60s were always there, especially around the beach cities where this story is set. Without even getting into the plot or characters, I have to applaud the author's evocation of the times and places. He brings them to life in a way that will appeal to those of us that remember it, as well as those who have not.

In the middle of that scene, the 'stoner' 60s, we find teenaged Matt, bombing around the streets and beaches on his bicycle trying to make a life for himself without much support from is mom, his dad out of the picture, his older brother in Viet Nam and then his beloved older sister goes missing. Add in a dead girl found on the beach who's scarily similar to his sister and we're off to the races with a suspenseful story that never seems to cut Matt a break. The police don't seem to be much help. The hippies at the local head shop are helpful, but shady. And that's just the beginning of Matt's woes.

Matt is an immensely likable character. Amazingly resilient and resolute in his quest to uncover the mystery of where his sister is. He doesn't give up. But he will grow up. This is a highly entertaining book.

Disclosure: Thank you to Netgalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge Books for providing a free copy of this book in return for my honest review. ( )

T. Jefferson Parker situates his novels firmly in his native southern California. Laguna Beach during the late 1960s serves as the location for this latest from the prolific author. His fictional version of the location is richly described, providing fertile ground for a mystery interwoven with the true—and truly extraordinary—backdrop. Matt Anthony is a feckless teen grappling with the counterculture movement while staving off starvation and pursuing his crush. While he would prefer to devote his attention to these more suitable efforts, he is diverted by the disappearance of his older sister. The authorities assume that Jazz has run away despite Matt’s repeated protests. Now, his new side job is to collect enough evidence to convince the police that she has been kidnapped. He indefatigably follows every possible avenue, even though his efforts expose him to a landscape filled with the clueless and the unscrupulous. He is left to navigate within this sphere of mistrust at a time when every traditional societal structure is being questioned. Parker wonderfully portrays the uncertainty and chaos endemic to the setting, but the central mystery becomes mired in Matt’s plodding search culminating in a farfetched resolution. With an inventive “McGuffin” injecting some overdue forward motion, the plot abandons its more realistic tone. Those looking to take a tour through mid-century America will find Parker’s protagonist a knowledgeable guide. Those looking for a truly thrilling and plausible mystery might opt to look elsewhere. ( )

If you’re into the peace-love-tie-dye scene, with or without the accompanying sex and drugs, Laguna Beach, California, is the place to be in summer 1968. Timothy Leary preaches the beauty of LSD to adoring crowds, and every other person, it seems, has a different mantra of self-enlightenment.

However, sixteen-year-old Matt Anthony watches most of this from the sidelines. He’s too busy trying to put food on the table, because his mother, hooked on opium-laced hashish, can’t. His older brother, Kyle, fighting in Vietnam, worries he won’t make it out alive, and Matt worries too. Their father? He’s a deadbeat, a former cop who mouths off about discipline and keeps promising to visit one day from whatever state he’s just fled to, a lie Matt has heard for seven years.

But just when life could not get worse, Matt’s older sister, Jasmine, has disappeared. At first, he thinks Jazz has merely let loose after graduating high school, but he comes to believe she’s been kidnapped. And since the police assume that Jazz is simply another drug-addled hippie on a bender, it’s up to Matt to rescue her.

How he goes about it makes for a tense, plot-driven thriller, where the ambience feels pitch-perfect. Parker captures Matt’s hand-to-mouth existence, in which he delivers newspapers practically for pennies, fishes off the rocks to get protein, and cadges meals of leftovers from friends who work in restaurant kitchens. He tries to avoid the war between cops and hippies, views anyone over thirty as “old,” and sympathizes with the antiwar protesters who chant, “Hell, no, we won’t go!”

Parker’s careful about social and cultural markers, and Matt immediately sizes up everyone he sees according to the pecking order that places him at or near the bottom, a clever touch. The only glaring false note in this otherwise exacting portrayal is how brother Kyle enlists despite drawing a safe draft lottery number, when the first lottery actually took place in late 1969. To me, overlooking that easily researchable fact suggests a characterization overreach, which I’ll get to in a moment. Otherwise, this novel has a recognizable Sixties vibe.

Parker throws obstacles in Matt’s path every step of the way. The boy has his mother’s drug habit and fecklessness to contend with, a cop who wants to break him, bad guys of all stripes (including those masquerading as good guys), and vicious types all too willing to prey on a young, defenseless kid down on his luck. There are plenty of reversals.

Where A Thousand Steps falters is the characterization, often two-dimensional, as with Kyle’s allegedly superfluous self-sacrifice. I believe the portrayals of Matt’s mother and a cop — not the one who wants to take Matt down — and a few other “oldsters,” but not those of the kids. Matt’s about the most upstanding person in Laguna Beach, and though you want him to carry a certain moral weight, he’s too upright, respectful, and open. Given such a selfish, neglectful, dishonest parents, I don’t understand why he isn’t more like them, or at least struggling not to be. It’s as though, in this coming-of-age novel, the protagonist has already figured out this youth thing and gotten good at it.

Most obviously, he’s got no adolescent anger or rebelliousness, though he has more right to them than many people making noise in Laguna Beach. He’s also much too trusting, to the point that when his father (an over-the-top superpatriot) interrogates him about his sex life, he answers, without a qualm. No qualms, either, about opposing the Vietnam War, though Kyle’s in it; the narrative pays lip service to that moral complexity and zips onward. As for the two girls attracted to Matt, they’re types, with good looks and social and cultural markers, but little in the way of inner life.

Finally, the end disappointed me; after such careful plotting, I didn’t expect the hackneyed, predictable confrontations. The romance subplot also takes an odd twist, with little afterthought. Consequently, A Thousand Steps is a strange amalgam, a novel with an intensely strong physical presence yet flimsy characters, a highly inventive narrative that somehow loses its sure-handedness at the climax. Take that for what you will. ( )

This novel takes place during the period of peace and love in the Laguna Beach area of California. It centers on a fifteen year old boy (Matt) and the kidnapping of his older sister. Dad is gone (divorced but he will come back) and mom is addled by drugs. His brother is in Vietnam. So the onus falls on Matt to search for her as he is getting little help from the police. He is dogged in his determination. Things are not all peace and love. This novel reads like a movie script and would make a good one.. ( )