Thirty-six, he feels that he is quickly approaching middle age and irrelevance, a fear he sees reflected in the economic decline of his hometown, Brewer, Pennsylvania.

When his wife leaves him for an eccentric Greek man named Charlie Stavros, Harry and his thirteen-year-old son Nelson are at a loss.

Seeking to fill the void left by Janice, Harry starts a commune, composed of himself; Nelson; Skeeter, a cynical, drug-dealing African-American Vietnam War veteran with messianic delusions; and Jill, a wealthy, white, runaway teenager from Connecticut.

While Skeeter keeps Jill in sexual thrall to him with heroin, Harry and Nelson are both drawn to Jill for the different things she represents to them: lost innocence and sexual conquest for Harry, and first love and coming of age for Nelson.

Time said of the book and its author, "Updike owns a rare verbal genius, a gifted intelligence and a sense of tragedy made bearable by wit.

"[1] Anatole Broyard, writing for The New York Times, opined, "In Rabbit Redux, Updike's ear is perfect and he has finally put together in his prose all the things that were there only separately.

The Rabbit novels, for all their grittiness, constitute John Updike's surpassingly eloquent valentine to his country."