Soul Catcher Book

Soul Catcher is the story of a teenage love affair that flourishes in idealism and perishes in addiction. The time is the mid-1970's, the place a progressive East Coast boarding school. Some students crash, others survive in the struggle to grow up in a society lost to a free-for-all of drugs, sex and psychological faddism; lost in a detached decade between the idealistic 60's and the cynical 80's; lost to a lonely search for self in a world of shattered families.

Publishers Weekly

Fifteen-year-old Kate Steiner is not sure why she is suddenly boarding at a Long Island school for troubled kids (``We were delinquents, addicts, mental cases, orphans and kids from broken homes''), though there is evidence that her lawyer parents in Westchester are having marital problems. Gradually initiated into the stratified school society, Kate, a child of the '70s, grapples with moral ambiguities on many levels. One such struggle is in her relationship with fellow student Patrick, a slip-sliding drug addict who eventually dies from his abuse. When Kate's parents separate and find other partners, Kate experiences additional emotional pulls that are heavy for one so young. This first novel, with its appealing theme of innocence lost in the loosening of family ties, is played out by underdeveloped characters. Among them are an inscrutable headmaster, uncommunicative parents and Patrick, the youth of fatal attraction. They make shadowy passage through Kate's questioning adolescence. (Oct.)