Rita the Red and the Man Who Sold the Moon : Rita the Red, Galactic Rebel

Berkeley, California in the mid nineteen seventies is boiling over with rebellion, conflict, and insanity...the Patty Hearst kidnapping; the drugged-out, brain damaged zombies; the Zodiac and Zebra killers, nightly Vietnam War protests; open gunfights between the police and the Black Panthers. Some of the crazies even swear that they have false memory implants, mind locks that block out half their brains, imposed by a galactic police state. Amidst this turmoil, Dorothy Thomas is a graduate student at Berkeley, abused as a child by her uncle, unloved by her parents, and the victim of a lab accident that destroyed half her face, who is on the verge of suicide when she is kidnapped by two psychotic killers who force her to dress in a red leather body suit and declare her Rita the Red, leader of the last two galactic rebellions, for whom millions have died and rivers of blood (not all red) have flowed. Rita the Red blends the atmosphere of the rebellious Berkeley with the far more real and greater conflict taking place in the entire galaxy. Dorothy, like many abused women, feels powerless, hopeless and depressed, a second class person; but by the end of the novel she discovers herself to be a maimed, but strong Rita the Red, leader of a galactic rebellion. Of course, with the strange assortment of characters, the pro-civil rights, con-man Shark; the nutty Albino, whom the Beatles left behind; the early success, early flop French perfume executive, Pierre (Rita's love interest); Rita's clones, Rita 1, 2 and "the Bitch"; and Rita's best friend Jenny (an AI) who's picked up a southern twang from listening to too much country music, there is plenty of emotional flux, romance, humor and action to lift this novel clear into outer space.