Outside Looking In

An old pro with more than 25 novels and short story collections under his belt, Boyle (The Terranauts) typically focuses on an event or moment in history and gives us his own take. This time around he sets his sight on Timothy Leary and his psychedelic "experiments" at Harvard in the early to mid-Sixties. Struggling psychology PhD student Fitzhugh Loney and wife Joanie are drawn to Leary and begin attending the Saturday night "sessions" in which Leary and his inner circle conduct "research" on the effects of psilocybin mushrooms. Soon, they graduate to LSD, then decamp to Mexico and later Millbrook, NY, to explore the psychedelic counterculture and the ideas of group think and communal living. The arrangement begins to take a toll on Fitz, Joanie, and their son, Corey. Things get weird, lives get ruined, and readers are along for all the highs and lows.