Amid the crises of the summer of 1968, two teenagers become lovers. Emily is a good Catholic girl, for whom an incarnate God means joy and contentment in the life of the body. William is preoccupied, in a vague sort of way, with politics and the evils of the System. Together, impelled by physical passion and the idealistic notion that "all our life is some form of religion, and all our action some belief," they run away to create a new life in the wilderness. In their absence, their parents' predictable lives take an entirely different course, and America itself seems to lose its innocence, never to be quite the same again. Not since Alice McDermott's That Night or Scott Spencer's Endless Love has there been a novel that portrays with such immediacy and respect teenagers' first loveits intensity, finely calibrated moods, and worldly innocenceand the elusive nature of adult loveits passion and fragility, comforts and betrayals.