The Company You Keep
By Neil Gordon
Viking Press, 2003

In the 1960s, as opposition to the Vietnam war intensified, a few radicals decided peaceful protest was not enough. They organized and coordinated violent acts to attack "the establishment." The actions included bank robberies and bombings. The group took its name from a line in a Bob Dylan song: "You don't need a Weatherman to know which way the wind's blowing."

Some members of the Weather Underground took on new identities and disappeared. They became adept at avoiding the authorities, in some cases for decades. But one by one they surfaced. They faced legal charges and tried to reconnect with lives and families they had avoided for years. Several such figures appear in Neil Gordon's new novel The Company You Keep.

(From the publisher) Based on intensive research into the divisive events of the late '60s and the lives of Weather Underground radicals and Vietnam veterans, The Company You Keep is a story of the ecstatic righteousness of youth and the bonds of family love, of ideals betrayed by violence, and of love sacrificed to history. When his political past catches up with him, one man goes on the run again after 30-odd years—this time not for political reasons, but for the love of his child. Again he becomes a fugitive, setting in motion an incredible American saga.

About the author
(From the publisher) Neil Gordon, associated for many years with the New York Review of Books and currently literary editor at The Boston Review, is the author of Sacrifice of Isaac and The Gunrunner's Daughter and a regular reviewer for The New York Times Book Review and The Washington Post.