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Huerfano: A Memoir of Life in the Counterculture
In the late 1960s, new age communes began springing up in the American Southwest with names like Drop City, New Buffalo, Lama Foundation, Morning Star, Reality Construction Company, and the Hog Farm. In the summer of 1969, Roberta Price, a recent college graduate, secured a grant to visit these communities and photograph them. When she and her lover David arrived at Libre in the Huerfano Valley of southern Colorado, they were so taken with what they found that they wanted to participate instead of observe. The following spring they married, dropped out of graduate school in upstate New York, packed their belongings into a 1947 Chrysler Windsor Coupe, and moved to Libre, leaving family and academia behind.
Huerfano is Price's captivating memoir of the seven years she spent in the Huerfano ("Orphan") Valley when it was a petrie dish of countercultural experiments. She and David joined with fellow baby boomers in learning to mix cement, strip logs, weave rugs, tan leather, grow marijuana, build houses, fix cars, give birth, and make cheese, beer, and furniture as well as poetry, art, music, and love. They built a house around a boulder high on a ridge overlooking the valley and made ends meet by growing their own food, selling homemade goods, and hiring themselves out as day laborers. Over time their collective ranks swelled to more than three hundred, only to diminish again as, for many participants, the dream of a life of unbridled possibility gradually yielded to the hard realities of a life of voluntary poverty.
Price tells her story with a clear, distinctive voice, documenting her experiences with photos as well as words. Placing her story in the larger context of the times, she describes her participation in the antiwar movement, the advent of the women's movement, and her encounters with such icons as Ken Kesey, Gary Snyder, Abbie Hoffman, Stewart Brand, Allen Ginsburg, and Baba Ram Dass.
At once comic, poignant, and above all honest, Huerfano recaptures the sense of affirmation and experimentation that fueled the counterculture without lapsing into nostalgic sentimentality on the one hand or cynicism on the other.
Huerfano is Price's captivating memoir of the seven years she spent in the Huerfano ("Orphan") Valley when it was a petrie dish of countercultural experiments. She and David joined with fellow baby boomers in learning to mix cement, strip logs, weave rugs, tan leather, grow marijuana, build houses, fix cars, give birth, and make cheese, beer, and furniture as well as poetry, art, music, and love. They built a house around a boulder high on a ridge overlooking the valley and made ends meet by growing their own food, selling homemade goods, and hiring themselves out as day laborers. Over time their collective ranks swelled to more than three hundred, only to diminish again as, for many participants, the dream of a life of unbridled possibility gradually yielded to the hard realities of a life of voluntary poverty.
Price tells her story with a clear, distinctive voice, documenting her experiences with photos as well as words. Placing her story in the larger context of the times, she describes her participation in the antiwar movement, the advent of the women's movement, and her encounters with such icons as Ken Kesey, Gary Snyder, Abbie Hoffman, Stewart Brand, Allen Ginsburg, and Baba Ram Dass.
At once comic, poignant, and above all honest, Huerfano recaptures the sense of affirmation and experimentation that fueled the counterculture without lapsing into nostalgic sentimentality on the one hand or cynicism on the other.
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
July 7, 2013
I found this book by chance at Barnes and Noble a few years ago and was immediately enthralled. Growing up in Huerfano County, Colorado during the 70's and early 80's, I knew there were communes up by Gardner. We would run into the hippies on occasion when they came to town and some of the kids came in to town to our schools. I had no idea exactly WHAT went on in their lives or even what a commune was. I just knew they wore odd clothes and were often dirty. This book fills in so many of the gaps between my outsiders perception and the reality of at least some of those who grew up in the community. It also makes me really sad - the utopia and peace these young people were searching for seemed to elude them.
I have read this book twice and bought copies for my family. There is a photo companion book that is fascinating also.
I have read this book twice and bought copies for my family. There is a photo companion book that is fascinating also.
April 5, 2016
The author and her husband were middle-class college students looking for a more authentic life during the late '60's. They visited several communes in advance (getting paid for their "research") and decided to settle in Huerfano soon after graduating. Price describes everything they did to become part of the community: building relationships with the current residents, constructing a "rock house" dwelling, finding unusual sources of income...and also describes the events that led to her ultimate return to a conventional lifestyle.
Her traditional values present an obstacle from the start. She doesn't really believe in "free love," would rather pay her own way than accept food stamps, and has trouble maintaining a non-judgmental stance towards communards whose behavior strays far from civility. Yet she soldiered on, for several years, as her own and others' personal relationships crumbled, until she had derived as much from the experience as she possibly could. I regret not being as daring and clear-sighted as Ms. Price, but am glad she made it possible for me to vicariously enjoy her adventures.
Her traditional values present an obstacle from the start. She doesn't really believe in "free love," would rather pay her own way than accept food stamps, and has trouble maintaining a non-judgmental stance towards communards whose behavior strays far from civility. Yet she soldiered on, for several years, as her own and others' personal relationships crumbled, until she had derived as much from the experience as she possibly could. I regret not being as daring and clear-sighted as Ms. Price, but am glad she made it possible for me to vicariously enjoy her adventures.
December 15, 2019
Readers will immediately be drawn in listening to Roberta Price’s unique narrative.
Read full review in the 2019 December issue of InD'tale Magazine.
Read full review in the 2019 December issue of InD'tale Magazine.
July 16, 2020
I really love this memoir. I came across it in 2015 while seeking out accounts of life in US communes, and was delighted to find that it was a deeply felt narrative, written by woman who was a commune resident for a number of years. I found it riveting. Price's decision to give her account in the present tense brings alive the book's themes: hope, idealism, and painful uncertainty. It is easy to be cynical about the counterculture after the fact, but she rejects this trap through her use of this tense. It also provides narrative tension as we see Price and her husband embark upon an ambitious shift in living, moving from their grad student jobs in NY to subsisting on a mountainside in Colorado with fellow hippies. How will they fare?
Price writes vividly, showing the events and experiences that led to her decision to live on a commune; the challenges and joys she experienced whilst integrating into the Libre community and building a life there; and the reasons behind her leaving after 7 years. I felt her excitement at experiencing the beauty of Libre. I felt her pain and confusion as 'free love' made inroads on the community. And I felt grief at the end of the story she tells here - grief at her dream dying, but also a sadness that the cultural significance of this difficult and beautiful project has past.
Her nature writing is spare and beautiful, bringing the sagebrush and piñon pines of the Huerfano valley (a place I have not been) alive on the page. She writes well about hippie things: LSD, and sex, and sharing. She weaves apt song lyrics into the story, making their meanings fresh again. Her own photos from the time serve as excellent illustrations. She is skilled at character sketches, allowing the reader to understand the dynamics between the many commune residents and visitors. This felt crucial to me - the people of the commune being as significant to such a project as the location and ideas it rested on.
At times Price writes about people in quite loaded ways - asking us to judge them along with her. For example, Gregory Corso is unsubtly presented as a lying junkie, without Price inviting much compassion or interest in why that might be. Despite her radical choices, she was not able to leave behind elements of her 'proper' upbringing. Many of her cultural frames of reference rely on old ideas of cowboys and homesteaders - white settlers enacting 'manifest destiny'. The unreflective nature of this grated on me, even as I could see that she'd been raised, in mid-century America, to see these things as romantic rather than violent and supremacist.
From a sociological point of view, these unexamined moments tell a part of the story of those times.
I love the book. I've read it three times now, and have taken something different from each reading. I expected to learn about commune life, but it also has me *feeling* it. The risks, the radicalism, the losses. It brings a lost time back, and also shares the lessons from that time with new generations of readers.
Price writes vividly, showing the events and experiences that led to her decision to live on a commune; the challenges and joys she experienced whilst integrating into the Libre community and building a life there; and the reasons behind her leaving after 7 years. I felt her excitement at experiencing the beauty of Libre. I felt her pain and confusion as 'free love' made inroads on the community. And I felt grief at the end of the story she tells here - grief at her dream dying, but also a sadness that the cultural significance of this difficult and beautiful project has past.
Her nature writing is spare and beautiful, bringing the sagebrush and piñon pines of the Huerfano valley (a place I have not been) alive on the page. She writes well about hippie things: LSD, and sex, and sharing. She weaves apt song lyrics into the story, making their meanings fresh again. Her own photos from the time serve as excellent illustrations. She is skilled at character sketches, allowing the reader to understand the dynamics between the many commune residents and visitors. This felt crucial to me - the people of the commune being as significant to such a project as the location and ideas it rested on.
At times Price writes about people in quite loaded ways - asking us to judge them along with her. For example, Gregory Corso is unsubtly presented as a lying junkie, without Price inviting much compassion or interest in why that might be. Despite her radical choices, she was not able to leave behind elements of her 'proper' upbringing. Many of her cultural frames of reference rely on old ideas of cowboys and homesteaders - white settlers enacting 'manifest destiny'. The unreflective nature of this grated on me, even as I could see that she'd been raised, in mid-century America, to see these things as romantic rather than violent and supremacist.
From a sociological point of view, these unexamined moments tell a part of the story of those times.
I love the book. I've read it three times now, and have taken something different from each reading. I expected to learn about commune life, but it also has me *feeling* it. The risks, the radicalism, the losses. It brings a lost time back, and also shares the lessons from that time with new generations of readers.
July 26, 2016
Huerfano: A Memoir of Life in the Counterculture by Roberta Price (U. Massachusetts Press 2004) (306.1). This is a memoir of the author's time spent in a commune in the 1970's. She visited one and liked it so much that she not only decided to stay but she wrote a book about her experiences. There must have been some funny, poignant, or otherwise engaging observations in her years at the commune, but they weren't included in this book. Perhaps she's saving them for another volume. At any rate, it turned out that the only things to recommend about this book are the cover photo (an (apparently) nude photo of (apparently) an attractive female member of a commune who is almost entirely hidden by a huge sheaf of marijuana plants), and the title. Taken together, these were enough to induce me to risk $3.00 at the local used book store on a fairly pristine copy of Huerfano. Oh well, gambled and lost, boys, gambled and lost. My rating: 5.5/10, finished 7/21/16. PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP
August 21, 2020
Life in a counterculture commune in the Huerfano (Orphan) Valley of Southern Colorado at the end of the 60s and through much of the 1970s. There was lots of free love (free lust), partner-swapping, and viewing drugs the way coffee and booze were viewed in the rest of the country at the time, which is to say no big deal. All that and a whole lot of (mostly empty) talk of The Revolution and how they were going to change the world.
Looking back, it would’ve shocked the outside world but doesn’t seem so shocking today. I’m a very monogamous sort of person, so I didn’t find myself liking these people a great deal. That isn’t to say it wasn’t interesting, though it did drag a bit at times. There was some good stuff here along with some rather dull stretches. Perhaps an abridged version of this book would’ve been just as good.
Mostly this is the story of David and Roberta, moving to the Libre Commune as husband and wife and, like most everyone else in that place, eventually going their separate ways.
It was all right and I don’t regret reading it.
Looking back, it would’ve shocked the outside world but doesn’t seem so shocking today. I’m a very monogamous sort of person, so I didn’t find myself liking these people a great deal. That isn’t to say it wasn’t interesting, though it did drag a bit at times. There was some good stuff here along with some rather dull stretches. Perhaps an abridged version of this book would’ve been just as good.
Mostly this is the story of David and Roberta, moving to the Libre Commune as husband and wife and, like most everyone else in that place, eventually going their separate ways.
It was all right and I don’t regret reading it.
June 11, 2009
This memoir is by a young graduate student who lived in a commune in the southern Colorado mountains for 7 years, without electricity or a steady job, in the 70's. I found her frank, personal account of her life in the counterculture fascinating. Her nature descriptions are Annie Dilliard-like and, as she was a literature major, I enjoyed her frequent literary references as well as pop culture references. She frequently likens her life as a throwback to the 1870s, more than the 1970s. To be the perfect book for me, I would have liked more of her how-to descriptions as she and her husband built their house, raised goats and cooked from scratch. However she does give a very complete description of how to make marijuana butter from plant stems for some killer brownies--this book is not for those who believe free love and the hippies getting high are necessarily bad things.
August 5, 2011
Nothing too exciting really ever happened in this commune and it seemed a little depressing to be there.
May 11, 2017
"Lots of hopes and dreams failed to take root and flower in the arid West."
This was one of the last lines of the book, and I think it sums up the entirety of Roberta Price's painfully boring entry into autobiography. Another good quote: "We learned hard lessons in the Huerfano, about selfishness, limits, and lunacy, about follies and visions that couldn't mesh." It seems this entire book is about selfishness and lunacy and visions that didn't mesh.
So let me explain how most books are supposed to progress. You start with a flawed hero, someone that has tremendous ambitions but is lacking the moral fiber, perhaps, to reach their goals. They go through conflicts that eventually make the protagonist a better person, and they ultimately reach their goals.
This book starts with Roberta, who apparently already starts with some strong morals about staying faithful to your marital partner, avoiding food stamps, and so on. And yet, as the story progresses, one by one, she just throws these ideals by the wayside when it's convenient for her. She felt a bit guilty about accepting government help for food stamps, but once she does out of necessity, the guilt is suddenly gone and she doesn't talk about it again for the rest of the book.
The same goes for her loyalty to her husband. She thinks this is a great idea until one moonlit night comes along, and then, boom, she's in bed with another man. And another man. And (wait for it!) ANOTHER man. This book needs to have a freakin' index for all her lovers during her time at Huerfano. I get that it's the time of free love and all that shit, and if you want, you should sleep with as many people as you want. I don't have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is the fact that she and David try to keep their marriage alive, through calling it an open marriage. Yeah, that's been highly successful before, and (spoiler alert! Well, not really) it doesn't work all that well here. They make a mockery of the word commitment.
The rest of the town is equally morally repugnant. Shoplifting is done with casual apathy. Everyone in the commune is so gung-ho upset at the government and thinks the whole thing is a big scam, and yet, grant money? Food stamps? Other miscellaneous support? Oh, we'll take that, thank you very much.
Perhaps the most deplorable part of the book comes when a couple's 3 year old daughter drowns in a pond. The adults just left this 3 year old to go play with the other kids, without a lick of supervision. "No one knows how she could have drowned at the pond." Oh really? Well, I have a theory on how this could have happened! It's because no adults were looking after her, because they were too busy smoking weed to bother to check on their actual children!! I mean, Jesus, guys! Show a little responsibility here! Oh, but it's OK, cause a few years later (after both parents have affairs and stuff) they have another baby! Wow, unbelievable. These people should be locked up.
Let's see, what else? Oh yeah, Roberta's kitten gets shot and killed because it was being too noisy. That's the mentality we're dealing with here, folks! If there's a problem, you kill it. If there's someone you like, you fuck them. If there's something you need, you beg, borrow, or steal. "By hook or by crook" is how at least 2 characters described getting by in the commune.
Too many characters just clouded the storyline and gave you way too much to keep track of. I understand that there were a lot of people in that commune, but I don't need to know what's going on with each and every one of them. A good story focuses on certain characters and lets the others fall by the wayside.
The book climaxes with meeting some supposedly famous poets from back in the Beatnik era, but if you haven't heard of any of them, you'll be bored to tears by the chapter. Maybe you'll be bored to tears even if you HAVE heard of who they are. But it really felt like a poor way to finally get to the end of the book. Oh yeah, and then after these poets come to Huerfano, Roberta just decides on a whim to quit the commune.
I understand with a name like "Counterculture" in the title that this isn't going to be a strait-laced jaunt through life. There's gonna be some "rebellion". I mean, it's about hippies, for crying out loud. But after reading just the first 100 pages of this book, I think this book turned me Republican again. Not crazy about their ideology, either, mind you, but if this is what being liberal minded is all about, and the kinds of people our welfare dollars support, then I'll go conservative any day.
How this ever got published boggles the mind. Roberta Price should be ashamed of herself.
This was one of the last lines of the book, and I think it sums up the entirety of Roberta Price's painfully boring entry into autobiography. Another good quote: "We learned hard lessons in the Huerfano, about selfishness, limits, and lunacy, about follies and visions that couldn't mesh." It seems this entire book is about selfishness and lunacy and visions that didn't mesh.
So let me explain how most books are supposed to progress. You start with a flawed hero, someone that has tremendous ambitions but is lacking the moral fiber, perhaps, to reach their goals. They go through conflicts that eventually make the protagonist a better person, and they ultimately reach their goals.
This book starts with Roberta, who apparently already starts with some strong morals about staying faithful to your marital partner, avoiding food stamps, and so on. And yet, as the story progresses, one by one, she just throws these ideals by the wayside when it's convenient for her. She felt a bit guilty about accepting government help for food stamps, but once she does out of necessity, the guilt is suddenly gone and she doesn't talk about it again for the rest of the book.
The same goes for her loyalty to her husband. She thinks this is a great idea until one moonlit night comes along, and then, boom, she's in bed with another man. And another man. And (wait for it!) ANOTHER man. This book needs to have a freakin' index for all her lovers during her time at Huerfano. I get that it's the time of free love and all that shit, and if you want, you should sleep with as many people as you want. I don't have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is the fact that she and David try to keep their marriage alive, through calling it an open marriage. Yeah, that's been highly successful before, and (spoiler alert! Well, not really) it doesn't work all that well here. They make a mockery of the word commitment.
The rest of the town is equally morally repugnant. Shoplifting is done with casual apathy. Everyone in the commune is so gung-ho upset at the government and thinks the whole thing is a big scam, and yet, grant money? Food stamps? Other miscellaneous support? Oh, we'll take that, thank you very much.
Perhaps the most deplorable part of the book comes when a couple's 3 year old daughter drowns in a pond. The adults just left this 3 year old to go play with the other kids, without a lick of supervision. "No one knows how she could have drowned at the pond." Oh really? Well, I have a theory on how this could have happened! It's because no adults were looking after her, because they were too busy smoking weed to bother to check on their actual children!! I mean, Jesus, guys! Show a little responsibility here! Oh, but it's OK, cause a few years later (after both parents have affairs and stuff) they have another baby! Wow, unbelievable. These people should be locked up.
Let's see, what else? Oh yeah, Roberta's kitten gets shot and killed because it was being too noisy. That's the mentality we're dealing with here, folks! If there's a problem, you kill it. If there's someone you like, you fuck them. If there's something you need, you beg, borrow, or steal. "By hook or by crook" is how at least 2 characters described getting by in the commune.
Too many characters just clouded the storyline and gave you way too much to keep track of. I understand that there were a lot of people in that commune, but I don't need to know what's going on with each and every one of them. A good story focuses on certain characters and lets the others fall by the wayside.
The book climaxes with meeting some supposedly famous poets from back in the Beatnik era, but if you haven't heard of any of them, you'll be bored to tears by the chapter. Maybe you'll be bored to tears even if you HAVE heard of who they are. But it really felt like a poor way to finally get to the end of the book. Oh yeah, and then after these poets come to Huerfano, Roberta just decides on a whim to quit the commune.
I understand with a name like "Counterculture" in the title that this isn't going to be a strait-laced jaunt through life. There's gonna be some "rebellion". I mean, it's about hippies, for crying out loud. But after reading just the first 100 pages of this book, I think this book turned me Republican again. Not crazy about their ideology, either, mind you, but if this is what being liberal minded is all about, and the kinds of people our welfare dollars support, then I'll go conservative any day.
How this ever got published boggles the mind. Roberta Price should be ashamed of herself.
May 21, 2019
Interesting account of the counter-cultural movement in Huerfano County Colorado back in the late 60s and early 70s during the Vietnam war and associated cultural revolution.
This book has special meaning to me. My dad currently resides in Huerfano county where a large part of this book takes place. The copy I have is a signed copy that belonged to his brother when he passed last year. Uncle Walter lived the counterculture lifestyle for a good part of his life which ultimately led to his demise. Walter was one of the most interesting men I've ever loved.
The author of this book doesn't really seem to fit into the cultural movement at all. She seems to be there more on account of her husband. She seems more of a pretender; bitter throughout and even more lecherous than her man.
It's about a bunch of "intellectuals" who want to live in a communal setting; hippies, when hippies weren't hipsters and partially cool. :)
Things don't go quite as they planned. The "free love" and open relationships they bragged about led to much heartache. Too many bad drugs twisted their minds and vision. They lived on food stamps, handouts, and thieved. They also had many tender moments looking out for one another.
They made their own clothes, brewed their own beer, grew marijuana and raised goats and other critters for food.
They tried their hardest to live off the land and share amongst themselves but mostly lived in poverty and squalor.
Great history and stories and music and poetry throughout. Much heartache and sadness and lonely love.
This book has special meaning to me. My dad currently resides in Huerfano county where a large part of this book takes place. The copy I have is a signed copy that belonged to his brother when he passed last year. Uncle Walter lived the counterculture lifestyle for a good part of his life which ultimately led to his demise. Walter was one of the most interesting men I've ever loved.
The author of this book doesn't really seem to fit into the cultural movement at all. She seems to be there more on account of her husband. She seems more of a pretender; bitter throughout and even more lecherous than her man.
It's about a bunch of "intellectuals" who want to live in a communal setting; hippies, when hippies weren't hipsters and partially cool. :)
Things don't go quite as they planned. The "free love" and open relationships they bragged about led to much heartache. Too many bad drugs twisted their minds and vision. They lived on food stamps, handouts, and thieved. They also had many tender moments looking out for one another.
They made their own clothes, brewed their own beer, grew marijuana and raised goats and other critters for food.
They tried their hardest to live off the land and share amongst themselves but mostly lived in poverty and squalor.
Great history and stories and music and poetry throughout. Much heartache and sadness and lonely love.
May 27, 2018
"Until LSD, however, I never felt that surge of wonder, the deep conviction that we are all God. I never understood that God was in me and everyone else, that life was infinitely precious, that the same divine energy pulsated through space, rocks, trees, everyone, everything, and that God was love."
"Some days I feel I'm here almost by accident, as if I just happened to marry the choices and life of my husband, the way wives have done for years, not questioning, putting the best face on it."
"Some days I feel I'm here almost by accident, as if I just happened to marry the choices and life of my husband, the way wives have done for years, not questioning, putting the best face on it."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 16, 2022
A book that was more or less made for my interests, focusing on the countercultural communes of the late 60s, early 70s, focusing on the Huerfano region of southern Colorado, an area I know well. Roberta Price was one of the numerous young people from the urban east who decided to set out in search of an alternative to the consumerist waste land. The Libre commune wasn't always an idyll, but she makes you feel its promise and the complicated relationships that made it hard to sustain.
February 3, 2013
loved this. i'm not sure if i've read much about communes from a woman's perspective, so it was great to read this. Although written in 2004, Roberta Price writes about her memories of commune life in Huerfano in the present tense so it feels like it's happening now. It feels fresh and real and still revolutionary. Price writes so well, and deals with so much here (vietnam, low-grade marijuana, politics, free love, cooking and cleaning and Allen Ginsberg)in such a way that she still takes her commune life seriously and doesn't look back on it in any way that belittles it or her ideas.
they ate a bit too much meat for my liking and i did not like that peter rabbit, but their houses were beautiful and they got back to nature and got messages from birds. sweet.
they ate a bit too much meat for my liking and i did not like that peter rabbit, but their houses were beautiful and they got back to nature and got messages from birds. sweet.
February 25, 2019
I totally enjoyed this memoir of living in a Colorado commune in the 1970's. I did not live in a commune but I knew many people who did and came in contact with commune life in Seattle and Idaho. Price's story rings very true. She really captures the political, economic, sexual, philosophical and just general feeling of the alternative lifestyle. I loved the way she talked about the views on the Vietnam war, on food stamps, on shoplifting, on marriage, on drugs, on the hard work of simple living, and on the joys and irritation of communal life. If you are near my age read and enjoy the memories. If you are younger, read and be envious of that wonderful, crazy time.
December 30, 2007
Very personal memoir of life in Libre, a hippy commune in the mountains by Walsenberg, CO or, at least, the author's experience of that life. Very open, very frank, very funny. We know a young man brought up in an adjacent commune and he turned us onto the book. Great insights into the contradictions, the drugs, the idealistic visions of these folk, set against the turmoil of US society at the time of the war in Vietnam. Oh what a difference a national draft makes to the public's support for a war.
January 14, 2008
It seems appropriate to have read this bittersweet memoir as I transcribe Ganesh Baba's manuscript, written in India during the same period. His audience was people like Roberta Price and me.
I didn't commit to a commune for seven years like Roberta Price did, but I was part of the same counterculture for as many years, sharing the values — many of them to this day — the experiments, the joy and the pain. It was perfect for me to relive those years right now.
Thanks so much for lending me your copy, Judy!
I didn't commit to a commune for seven years like Roberta Price did, but I was part of the same counterculture for as many years, sharing the values — many of them to this day — the experiments, the joy and the pain. It was perfect for me to relive those years right now.
Thanks so much for lending me your copy, Judy!
August 6, 2012
The 60's an 70's have always fascinated me so once I came across this I was compelled to read it. It was so much more interesting and refreshing to read a memoir versus strictly historical material. This book both solidified my draw to commune life as well as shoved it away. She didn't spare you any ups and downs which made it very real and easily drew you in. I am now fascinated by Roberta and would like to learn more about her life after the commune. Most of all it's inspiring, follow those dreams of yours no matter how big or small.
October 25, 2012
Huerfano is a memoir of Roberta Price about the time she spent in Huerfano Valley from 1970 to 1977. In the book Roberta Price gets married and moves to Huerfano, Colorado to avoid violence and the Vietnam War. It is a good book and it explains a lot about counterculture in the 60s. It’s great for teens and adults, but I wouldn’t recommend it for young children because of swearing and drug use in the book. It is great if you want to learn about the 1960s hippie movement. This is great book and it helped me understand what life was like in the 60s and what the hippies believed in.
November 1, 2015
Fantastic book, put a human perspective on an era of so much lore. Really helped me understand the time period in which my mother went from child to adult. Also love the writing style, so crisply descriptive, I have no idea how she remembered all the details so well, I certainly can't keep that many characters in my head at once!
October 19, 2010
My favorite memoir of the counterculture. Really thought-provoking and even touching in places. We'll see how my generally conservative students respond.
January 9, 2011
I loved this trip through one of my favorite parts of my home state. Plus, Price has very interesting reflections on feminism and the frontier that have stuck with me.
August 11, 2013
I really liked this book. It brought back so many memories of a time long gone, but fun to remember.
November 2, 2014
Interesting material but too self-indulgent. I had to skim a lot.
April 24, 2017
Drugs and sleeping around. No surprises.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews