At some point in the mid-90s, Jane realizes there’s something terribly wrong about having spent fourteen of her eighteen years in the Montana woods, homeschooled by her dad. She can kill and dress a deer, roam far and wide through the forest, and expound on Voltaire and Tolstoy—but she has never watched TV, bought new clothes, or held hands with a boy. One day, her dad brings home a computer and an internet hookup so he can publish The Luddite Manifesto, his screed against the emerging digital age. Once a computer pioneer himself, he had rebelled against structured society, faked his and his four-year-old daughter’s deaths, and escaped to the wilderness. Using the computer to check on his former colleagues, he becomes enraged at their roles in ushering in the internet era. He and Jane travel to Seattle, where he uses a homemade bomb to blow up a Microsoft facility, killing one of his former associates. He tells his daughter to run—and for the first time in her life, she is free, though utterly unsure of her next step. After some online research and decoding a ciphered letter from her father, she realizes her life has been built on lies. Her name is Esme, not Jane; their surname is Nowak, not Williams; and most importantly, her mother is alive. She sets off for San Francisco, where it all began.
By chance, she lands a job, but soon learns that both she and her father are wanted by the FBI. Meeting her mother proves to be far less fulfilling than she had hoped. Life in society is exhilarating and joyful yet complicated and full of challenges. After turning in her father and testifying against him, she chooses a life far removed from the world of technology. One doesn’t expect a coming-of-age story centered on the early internet to be a page-turner—but this one is, and it’s a truly fine novel.
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