Foxy dies at the beginning of a summer of transition. Paul is saddened by the loss of his companion, but about to go to college. Marty is finishing summer school at Wittenberg, living in a room of her own and preparing to go to England. Line visits Stephen at the SDS headquarters in Chicago as often as she can. On a very hot evening, they go over to the lake and sit in the cooling breeze.
Line is invited by Kay to a discussion of SDS women who have come back from the summer convention disgruntled. They feel that the men don’t let them talk. To cool down, Line and her roommate go to a Japanese restaurant, a very foreign experience. Worried about her future, Line is grateful when her roommate tells her about a nursing program. Line investigates and tells Stephen she plans to enroll.
Marty takes a train to New York and an Icelandic flight to London. She has vowed to accept every invitation! She explores Oxford, attends evensong at Magdalene College, and hears Tolkien read a story. Irene Magnusson cooks wonderful food and Marty eats too much. She is pursuing her interests in modern writers, but cannot articulate what she is doing. She also feels she is not doing enough for her keep.
At the small junior college Paul has chosen, he finds his religion professor quite conservative. But he is thrilled with the daring songs the choir director chooses and he particularly loves his biology professor, who spends most of his time in the greenhouse. When a tornado touches down nearby, Paul helps. And at Christmas, Line comes home from Chicago, bringing bagels and the great world.
Line is a little older than her classmates in the LPN program at Cook County Hospital. They all bear the fierce Chicago winter, prepping to go into the hospital. On Saturdays, Line meets Stephen who comes up from the south. She is still working at the Home for the Aged in north Chicago. At the hospital, Line is put into a group on the obstetrics ward where she watches two very different births.
As spring comes, Marty feels more at home in Oxford. She is reading a biography of Joyce and attending lectures on the Moderns. She meets Glyn there, a scholarship student who asks her to the theatre. She rushes home for a dinner of snails baked in butter and garlic, with wine. But then meets Glyn for an Ibsen play. They go to the pub afterward, talking of their interests.
Paul joins the choir tour down into Texas, traveling through states he has never seen. He stays in different homes and enjoys a barbecue when they get to Texas Lutheran College. The morning of the big concert, however, Oddmar, their director, has a heart attack and dies. After their big concert, the tour is abruptly canceled.
Marty and Kate hitchhike to Dover, take the ferry, and then head for Paris. The hostels there are full, so the first night they are up all night, walking through Les Halles and eating pommes frites, snails and brandy. After Paris, they go to Germany and finally down to Greece at Easter. All of their experiences sink deeply down into Marty. Truck drivers pick them up as they head north through Yugoslavia.
In her last month at Oxford, Marty longs to stay. Glyn tells her he doesn’t want a girlfriend, however, on an afternoon of sunshine and rain. Marty visits Kate at the retreat center where she works, sitting at twilight at the bottom of the garden, trying to decide what she should do next. She determines she must do as she wants, an unfamiliar concept to her! She slips away without saying goodbye to Glyn.
Line works and studies hard all year. She also cannot help getting involved with some of the patients, often girls having babies who are younger than she. She and Stephen have little time to get together, but he recognizes that Line needs a break and offers to pay her bus fare to go home. A friend from the women’s group asks if Line knows any doctors who would help with abortions, illegally. She is surprised and sad.
Paul and Marty help Mother and Dad move across the state, saying goodbye to their favorite creek, the towering old house and garden. The new house is recently built, beautiful. Kristen makes a cake for Mother’s birthday. Paul unpacks boxes of books and fires up the barbecue. In the evening, he goes exploring, to a river nearby and listens to a Twins game on the radio, trying not to think too much about his future.
In Berkeley, where Marty has accepted another “au pair” job to postpone her choices, she is fascinated by the strange, spikey vegetation and the architecture which allows for an indoor-outdoor way of living. Marty picks up the Chertok kids from school and watches Julia Child with them in the evening. She explores Berkeley, going to a famous political coffee shop. Everything is new, once again.
After she finishes her LPN program, Line gets a job at the hospital and an apartment in Hyde Park, which she shares with a friend. Line and Stephen see more of each other, but Line begins to wonder if she isn’t pregnant. She lives with this thought many weeks before finally confirming it. What will Stephen do? She worries, but one evening, he takes Line to listen to jazz and asks her to marry him.
Mother calls Paul and asks him to come home for the weekend. Line and Stephen were coming to get married, bringing Stephen’s parents. Everyone is nervous and on their best behavior. Dad prepares a service of blessing, as Line and Stephen have already had a civil ceremony. Everything goes well. Dad and Paul plan a trip up to the lake to open the cabin and plant trees. Paul feels most at home in the north.
Enjoying coffee at the Med one morning, Marty is approached by Erik, an architectural student. He asks if she would come to San Francisco with him on Friday. Marty goes, but the rock concert they attend gets very late. They go to a friend of Erik’s in the Haight. In the morning, Marty hears about temp work in the city. She is chagrined to get home the next day, but Erik turns on the charm and apologizes.
Line’s friend Kay comes to have tea and sympathy with her, bringing her own baby. It is the week of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago and Stephen has been working hard on organizing. Line continues to work, her baby due in November, but she is worried about Stephen. He comes home from the protests and jail, bruised, bloodied but exultant. “It’s just the beginning,” he says. Line turns away.
At the lake, Paul helps Dad frame out a small “beach house” down near the water. He is happy at the lake and wants to soak in everything, but also he takes the canoe out, plays folk songs on the guitar and reads all night. When he and Dad go in to buy roofing materials, Paul is mesmerized by a good pair of boots, tents and sleeping bags. It will be a couple of years before he has money for these things.
Marty finds living in the city simple, and feels free. She has a typing job. Going out with friends to eat Russian food, the talk ranges widely. On Saturday, she goes to a communal darkroom and makes prints of the photographs she has been taking. She then meets a friend for a Pasolini film. The friend is disappointed, but Marty sees the beauty even in a story of degradation.
Line’s baby comes just at the beginning of November. The birth is relatively easy, though exhausting. Stephen and Line name the little boy Christopher. At Thanksgiving, they walk down the street to Bernie and Kay’s house to celebrate with friends. “And Nixon will be in the White House for four years!” says Kay, incredulous.
Marty flies home for Christmas and Paul drives to Chicago to pick up Line and her baby. The house is so harmonious and everyone passes the baby around, while eating the cookies the girls have made. Line, Marty and Paul stay up late, ecstatic to see each other and filling each other in on their lives. Under the tree is a lefse grill, and the next afternoon Line and Marty make some.
At school in northern Minnesota, Paul goes skiing with his roommate at night. When he goes with an outreach team to a nearby church, he meets a teacher from Alaska with a broken leg. He immediately sees her path as possible for himself. When the Red River floods that spring, Paul helps sandbag and recover possessions. At last he tells Mother and Dad he is thinking about teaching, not going to the seminary.
Line is pleased to stay home with baby Christopher, but when the semester ends she is terrified they won’t have any money. She doesn’t want to get a job and leave Christopher with the preoccupied Stephen. For him the revolution is hardening. When Bernie Freeman is attacked, Line tries to get Stephen to pull back. He is giving all their resources to SDS, however. Line asks Marty to send her a ticket to California.
Line and Christopher take a train across the Rockies and Marty meets them. The air feels very different to Line, and after a shower and a night’s sleep, she begins to feel much less worried. Marty and Line explore the northern part of San Francisco and rent an apartment of their own. They spend an evening on the ocean beach, watching the sun go down. To Line, California feels simple, and safe.
Erik drives Marty down to a cabin in the redwoods near Santa Cruz, where a bunch of friends are being lazy, smoking weed. Erik and Marty make spaghetti. On the way home they stop at the beach. Marty finds friends with Line at their apartment. They have found a cunning backpack for Christopher to ride in. Line does not want to go back to Chicago. Marty encourages her to stay, do nursing work.
In his last year in college, Paul already has his sights set on Alaska. He studies the Fairbanks newspapers. He does his student teaching in a small nearby town, putting his whole self into it. Mr. Hudson, the teacher he works with, invites him golfing, in October! Meeting people outside his own culture attunes Paul to the world, but he misses Line and Marty, would like to compare notes.
Line has an evening job at a hospital and arranges child care with friends. She is meeting people who know about herbs and healing. Julia invites her to a Sufi dance and Line brings Christopher. When Stephen calls, Line cannot imagine going back to Chicago. San Francisco feels safe, though Stephen seems to be rejecting “revolution.” Jack and Nathan come over and they watch “The Avengers.”
Dad gives Paul the old Country Sedan station wagon and a second-hand sleeping bag of which he is very proud. He sets off across country, first to San Francisco to see his sisters. For a week the three of them, plus Christopher on his little legs, explore the city, ending up one day at the Japanese tea garden. They can hardly bear to leave each other, they enjoy being together so much.
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