American Woman

The acclaimed author delivers a tale of race, class, and resistance inspired by the Patty Hearst kidnapping: “I couldn''t put [it] down” (Joan Didion).

On the lam for an act of terror against the American government, twenty-five-year old Jenny Shimada agrees to care for three younger fugitives whom a shadowy figure from her radical past has spirited out of California. One of them, the kidnapped daughter of a wealthy newspaper magnate in San Francisco, has become a national celebrity for embracing her captors’ ideology and joining their terrorist cell.

A thought-provoking meditation on themes of race, identity, and class, American Woman explores the psychology of the young terrorists, the intensity of their isolated existence, and the paranoia and fear that undermine their ideals.