Nothing has changed, and nothing is the same…
playground zero
a novel
Available now!
playground zero
a family's journey through 1960s Berkeley
1968 — Siren songs and loosened bonds. War, campaign slogans, and assassination. When the Raysons leave D.C. for the gathering anarchy of Berkeley, each embraces the moment in a hippie paradise that’s fast becoming a cultural ground zero. As family and school fade away in a tear gas fog, young Alice feels an ambiguous freedom in the 1960s counterculture. Following the Summer of Love, she must find her way through a new world where street signs hang backward and there’s a bootleg candy called Orange Sunshine.
“Playground Zero is an exceptional piece of literary fiction that puts Sarah Relyea in a league of her own. The characters are unique and authentic to the era and geography, each maneuvering through a labyrinth at a time when the United States was propelled into the sphere of real change.” — Readers’ Favorite (5-star review)
“This intense retrospective on people yanked out of the strait-laced Fifties and tossed into a culture of anything goes will appeal to readers wanting to learn more about Berkeley’s days of rage.” — G. J. Berger, Historical Novel Society
“An eerily compelling déjà vu of the free, wild, and jeopardy-ridden kid scene in late-1960s Berkeley. Uncanny and powerful.” — Charles Degelman, Editor, Harvard Square Editions
“The characters were raw and complex.” — Amy’s Bookshelf Reviews
Sarah Relyea
Born in Washington, D.C., Sarah Relyea left the Berkeley counterculture at age thirteen and processed its effects as a teenager in suburban Los Angeles. She would soon swap California’s psychedelic scene to study English literature at Harvard. Sarah is the author of Playground Zero, a work of historical fiction, and Outsider Citizens: The Remaking of Postwar Identity in Wright, Beauvoir, and Baldwin. She remains bicoastal, living in Brooklyn and spending time on the Left Coast.
