Lost and Found: My Life in a Group Marriage Commune (CounterCulture series)

In 1970 Margaret Hollenbach, an idealistic twenty-five-year-old graduate school dropout, changed her name and gave up her possessions to join a commune known as The Family, located in Taos, New Mexico. The Family believed in "group marriage" and practiced its own version of Gestalt therapy, sometimes coercively. Hollenbach spent only a few months in this intense environment, but the lessons she learned have shaped her life. She tells the story of the young woman she was then in an unsparingly honest memoir. "Powerfully told and beautifully written. Hollenbach has a marvelous ear for dialogue. The Family comes across as a fascinating experiment in friendship, open sexuality, and group dynamics. But it is also revealed as a quasi-cult led by a charismatic leader whose hold on his followers is frightening and bizarre."--David Farber, co-editor of UNM Press's CounterCulture Series "In Lost and Found, critical intelligence and vivid story-telling achieve a fine balance. With disarming honesty and grace, Hollenbach not only charts a personal journey toward self-acceptance, but also re-creates the gritty, complex reality behind the 60s generation, whose search for transformation turned the American dream inside out."--Molly Best Tinsley, author of Throwing Knives (winner, Oregon Book Award, 2001) For a discussion guide on Lost and Found and suggestions for further reading, click on the "Read more" link below.