Radical Passions

Kendall Hale presents her life in the context of major historical events. Her journey is personal yet universal, tracing her adolescence during the turbulent sixties and the Vietnam war, young adulthood struggles in Boston with the new communist, feminist and labor movements, marriage, family and the birth and maturation of her spiritual quest after a move to Asheville, North Carolina. This memoir follows her evolution from DNA Mormon daughter to SDS member and anti-war protester, women’s collective member and consciousness-raising singer/fiddle player. She takes us on her search for the socialist dream in Castro’s Cuba, Mao’s China, and Nicaragua during the Contra War and to her life as wife, mother and veteran of a fractured marriage. Therapy, Buddhism, and spiritual travels in India, South America, and the Pacific lead Kendall back to the land with her family to the Blue Ridge mountains in a community, replete with rednecks, polygamists, voracious developers, environmentalists, and new age dreamers. Transitioning into menopause and the second half of life, she faces the challenges of aging and its potential flowering of wisdom and integration.