THE HOUSE ON ASHBURY STREET

During a client’s session, a child therapist experiences a flashback that initiates an unraveling within her psyche in Hara’s novel.

In 1975, 7-year-old Nikki Gold lived with her single mom in a large multi-storied cooperative home during the waning but still influential hippie era in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. Now, in 2005, Nikki works with kids and has come to know the value of therapy. She sought help to process the effects of an upbringing in which personal boundaries were unclear. However, therapy did not reveal everything about her past. New revelations begin to bubble to the surface after she visits her childhood home, which she calls “the House,” while attending a conference on post-traumatic stress disorder. Nikki’s life leads her on a path toward Deb Travis, an old housemate who’s equally interested in PTSD, due to her late brother’s struggle with it. Other housemates also resurface; as characters, some readers may find them a bit clichéd, in that they portray common 1970-era character types, including the militant Che; the sexually free, witchy Stretch; the Black maternal figure Mama Linda; and the longhaired, mellow dreamboat Ron. Their relationships to Nikki and Deb and their roles in the house, however, are substantial, and they are crucial to later revelations. The ominous and arresting tone of the prologue offers heavy-handed foreshadowing, which may see readers making early assumptions; the passage might have worked better later in the narrative. Hara later develops that section’s character in a measured way by slowly coloring in details, which renders the initial introduction clunky and unnecessary. The story’s growing intrigue is engrossing, however, as chapters jump between 2005 and 1975 and alternate between tales of Deb, Nikki, and, occasionally, other housemates. Each character’s recollection assists in reconstructing a piecemeal account of an extremely fateful day.

A slightly uneven but ultimately compelling story of a young woman finding out new facts about her identity.