The title, Braided Lives, is far too nice for this story of a young Jewish woman who leaves her working class home in Detroit and goes off to the University of Michigan in the 1950's. The title does not convey the dynamism and the brutality of the book. Piercy has ripped off the veneer of the "quiet 50's". With a driving determination, she wants to set the record straight that life for women, for Jews and the working class was difficult. A more apt title might have been "Blood on the Tracks" which would have prepared the reader for a "coming of age" novel that is unusual….

If there are any readers who still swallow the phony "life is beautiful" mystique so carefully perpetrated by President Reagan, Piercy is ready to shove their faces into the despair of downtown Detroit and the selfish brutality of Grosse Pointe. She...