Stephen Fair

A baby crying in a treetop, a remarkable tree house threatened by fire from below. When he was only eleven, Stephen Fair was pressed into service by his fifteen-year-old brother Marcus to write down, bit by bit, the older boy's recurring nightmare -- a nightmare that eventually drives Marcus away from home.

Now fifteen himself, Stephen seems to have inherited that nightmare, an event from Marcus's early childhood when his hippie parents, Doug and Brenda, lived in a commune in the hills above Santa Cruz, California. Why is Stephen plagued by what happened there? And what is it that drove away not only Marcus but Doug as well, neither to be heard from again? He begins to piece together the real story behind his own childhood and the secret his mother has tried to shield him from. It is Stephen who, riding out the devastation brought down upon the Fair household by the mistake of an impulsive moment. is left to begin the process of bringing his family -- what's left of it -- back together. This illuminating novel is all about making do with who we are, and about what "family" really means and how it can be threatened -- destroyed -- when the foundation, the past, is built on shifting sands.