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Cover of Eat the Document by Dana Spiotta

Book · Adult

Eat the Document

A Novel

by Dana Spiotta

304 pages · 2006

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About the book

In the 1970s, Bobby Desoto and Mary Whittaker -- passionate, idealistic, and in love -- design a series of radical protests against the Vietnam War. When one action goes wrong, the course of their lives is forever changed. The two must erase their past, forge new identities, and never see each other again. Now it's the 1990s. Mary lives in the suburbs with her fifteen-year-old son, who spends hours immersed in the music of his mother's generation--and she has no idea whether Bobby is alive or dead. An ambitious and powerful story about idealism, passion, and sacrifice, Eat the Document shifts between the underground movement of the 1970s and the echoes and consequences of that movement in the 1990s. It is a riveting portrait of two eras and one of the most provocative and compelling novels of recent years. --- From back cover.

For parents

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