Plot Summary
Rabbit Redux finds the former high-school basketball star, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, working a dead-end job (as a Linotype operator at the local printing plant) and approaching middle age in the downtrodden and fictional city of Brewer, Pennsylvania, the place of his birth. When his wife leaves him for another man, Harry and his thirteen-year-old son are at a loss, and the chaotic state of the nation circa 1969 finds its way into Harry's home.
Updike's recurring themes of guilt, sex, and death are joined in Redux by racism when Harry plays host to an African-American named Skeeter, a cynical, drug-dealing Vietnam vet who engages Harry in debates about the war and race relations. Jill, a wealthy white teenager fleeing suburban Connecticut, enthralls both Harry and his son, and the four of them make a scandalous household emblematic of the Summer of Love's most confusing implications, culminating in a house fire that kills Jill. Harry and his wife are reconciled at book's end.
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