In search of a rev­o­lu­tion, any rev­o­lu­tion— that’s one def­i­n­i­tion of a rebel with­out a cause. Deb Olin Unferth and her col­lege boyfriend, George, wan­der around Cen­tral Amer­i­ca in the late 1980’s plan­ning to be rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies, hop­ing to res­cue the mass­es from they-aren’t‑quite-sure-what. These kids have a min­i­mal con­cept of the social and polit­i­cal forces at play. And play is what they are real­ly doing, play­ing at rev­o­lu­tion. They seem to reg­is­ter only bare­ly that ide­al­ism starts with idea.

This is an endear­ing mem­oir, nonethe­less. From an old­er, wis­er, more devel­oped place in life, Unferth looks back at her younger self with a mix of empa­thy, humor, and great affec­tion. She man­ages to make a grungy, always hun­gry, often depress­ing, scary land­scape sound like maybe it was some kind of great adven­ture, after all. And we share the empa­thy and affec­tion she shows her very human, younger self. We were all young and stu­pid once upon a time. Maybe we made the kinds of deci­sions that cause us to look back and won­der, what were we think­ing? We live, we learn, we watch a new gen­er­a­tion make the same mis­takes. And they learn, too.

Here’s the beau­ty in this very fun­ny, very sweet, mag­nif­i­cent­ly writ­ten short mem­oir: being young and in love and on a noble quest…maybe I know bet­ter but it sounds just grand!