Everything We Thought We Knew - by Carolyn Niethammer (Paperback)

About the Book

In 1970, Christie joined a New Age commune in rural Arizona to help create a better society. Join the friends at Bella Vida as they try to change the rules of modern society, only to face the repercussions when middle age sets in.

Book Synopsis

In 1970, Christie left behind the comforts of L.A. and joined a New Age commune in rural Arizona. With the Vietnam War raging and the counterculture movement in full swing, she hoped to find her place in the world and create a better society. But building a new social order is no easy task, especially when free love, psychedelics, and a war protest gone horribly wrong are thrown into the mix.

While dancing under the moon in an Indian ruin, Christie reconnects with a lover from a past life, setting in motion events that reverberate through their futures. The end of the commune is not the end of the story. Thirty years later, a child born there forces long-held secrets to be revealed, and everyone's lives are changed forever.

If you're a fan of the Woodstock generation, or simply curious about the counterculture of the 1960s, this book will transport you back to this tumultuous era.

Put on your tie-dyed shirt and come to Bella Vida as the friends try to change the rules of modern society, then face the repercussions when middle age sets in.

If you enjoyed books like "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe or "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac, you'll love this one.

Review Quotes

In Everything We Thought We Knew, Niethammer immerses us in the back to the land movement of the early 1970's to explore what constitutes a good life. Is it the untested visions of idealistic youth or the compromises that inevitably define middle age? She leads us to believe we are on a journey to a commune, but the road leads back to ourselves and how the decisions we make at each inflection of time create unexpected ripples. We are all destined to move forward, in the worlds of her protagonist, "under the burden of the lack of a complete idea." Niethammer's very readable prose creates a worthy trip.

- Margaret Grundstein, author of Naked in the Woods: My Unexpected Years in a Hippie Commune.

And now for a whiff of patchouli ....

Local food and culture writer Carolyn Niethammer drew from her younger self living at the Rancho Linda Vista artists' community to inform this hippie commune tale.

"Everything We Thought We Knew" opens in 2001 with 30-year-old April, expecting her first child, pressing her mother, Sunshine, and Sunshine's best friend, Christie, to describe April's inexplicably shadowy birth story from the friends' 1970s' time in a commune. April has heard something about her mother's commune story, she says, so she asks Christie about hers. Christie's spools out in flashback:

At loose ends, married to a rock musician leaving on tour, underemployed, and fed up with L.A., Christie decided to "find herself" in an Arizona commune. What she found - through scrambling for housing, seeking her place, learning new skills, and meeting shifting moralities - was a community aspiring to, but not always governed by peace and love. In addition, she found someone very unlike that rock musician husband.

What readers find is a pleasing reminiscence of sing-alongs, beads, hope for a new world, vortex power, non-Western spiritualism. Also, of course, marijuana, mushrooms, the threat of the Vietnam draft, the clash between rural and hippie culture; and, well, sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.

What April finds is a new way to think about family.

"Everything We Thought We Knew" is an appealing evocation of what we didn't appreciate then as a simple, more honest time.

- Christine Wald-Hopkins, The Arizona Daily Star

I found this tale of Christie and her experience of an Arizona Commune to be engrossing. ...

The hippy escapism life was well described, along with the 'free' idealism. Was commune life nothing more than a smoke and mirrors illusion that the 1970s created alongside the rose-tinted glasses of a self-sufficiency dream, where, in reality, "free love" had consequences and money was necessary after all. But to balance that, there was also the down-to-earth side of carefree joy, with interesting people doing interesting things; of an unconventional lifestyle and spiritual beliefs.

- Helen Hollick, The Coffeepot Book Club