HIPPIEVILLE

About the Book

Bad Boy Reforms for Love

A rock god crashes from his pedestal when the innocent young girl he victimized turns the tables.

Just as the prodigal son rose up and came home, the rock god of Hippieville finds himself at the end of a long, hard road. He seeks a spiritual advisor to confess to and give him guidance. In 1968, Ben Z. ruled the town. Likable, rich, and non-involved, at first he wouldn’t admit he did anything wrong. He committed a crime and now he has to atone for it. When a friend asked, "Was it the kind you commit with a car, a gun?" he said, "No, with your body." He was so wasted that he blundered into sex with the wrong girl, and raped her. Instead of his willing groupie, she turned out to be an innocent high school girl who had too much to drink at her first big party. Leda woke up pregnant. Scandal rocks the small New Hampshire town, and she bears "The Scarlet Letter." But Ben isn't spineless like Dimmesdale in Hawthorne's classic. He stands up for Leda in front of the whole town. Leda acts as though she looks up to him, but she plots with her cousin Evie, the singer in the band, to force him to sign a confession. Ben fights to maintain a facade of honor as his world crashes down. The cops, his father, and the jealous town boys—he has to face them all.

Leda runs away to the city and vanishes among the Flower Children. Ben follows, searching for a chance to redeem himself. Disinherited, he works as a lowly dishwasher in a cafeteria near the encampment the Mayor of Boston calls Hippieville. Boston boils over with anti-war protests. In a disastrous riot, the police chase the hippies off the Common. When Ben meets Leda again, she distrusts him, but in desperation, she moves in with him. They live for months as platonic roommates, their dialog an escalating war of insults in the cramped apartment on Beacon Hill.

Cover art used by permission Linda B. Levine

Quotes on HIPPIEVILLE:

"It's about people and how they fit into their generation and how their times affect their lives. It is timeless, because the search for independence and a sense of family is a timeless theme, but one that seemed particularly poignant in the '60's when the young were coming up and overthrowing the old. It was exciting to be running wild and searching for a better family than the one from which we all came."

--Sam Southworth, Portsmouth NH

"The external turbulence of the times is woven seamlessly into the inner turbulence and demons of the main characters. HIPPIEVILLE never pulled any punches. It never got soft. It was raw, fast and real."

--Karen Clayton, Toronto ON

About the Author

MARCIA K. MATTHEWS is a Gemini born in Boston in the year of the Buffalo. She majored in English at the University of New Hampshire, and graduated cum laude in 1974. Her poems have appeared in Hawaii Review; Sojourner; and A Wise Woman's Garden; journalism in The Belmont Citizen-Herald; The TAB; Equal Times; and Newburyport Daily News. Her pamphlet Pornography-License to Kill (New England Free Press, 1978) was anthologized in Fight Back (Cleis Press, Minneapolis, 1983). Her novels include: Morgan's Way: Henry Morgan holds 17th Century Jamaica for England. The Liberty Boys: Maid Dacey Flynn joins the patriots of Savannah and ships aboard with Oliver Bowen. Boss of the Bayou: Jean Lafitte and his pirates help win the War of 1812. Prides Crossing: Mary Brandegee rivals art collectors Gardner and Frick in Edwardian New England. Gegenspion/Counterspy: A German prince helps the Allies as a code-breaker in WW II. Currently facilitating a creative writing group at the Woonsocket, Rhode Island Library, she honed her speaking skills at Toastmasters International.