With little more than a run-down Jeep and their newborn baby in tow, author Micah Perks' parents set out in 1963 to build a school and a utopian community in the mountains. The school would become known as a place to send teens with drug addictions and emotional problems, children with whom Micah and her sister would grow up.

This complex memoir mixes a moving celebration of the utopian spirit and its desire for community and freedom with a lacerating critique of the consequences of those desires -- especially for the children involved. How could the campaign for a perfect home and family...