SKU: 72940083957

The Light Years: A Memoir

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The Light Years: A MemoirLambda Literary Award Finalist A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Named a best book of 2019 by Parade The Light Years is a joyous and defiant coming of age memoir set during one of the most turbulent times in American history This stunningly beautiful, original memoir is driven by a search for the divine, a quest that leads Rush into some dangerous places . . . The Light Years is funny, harrowing, and deeply tender. Kate Tuttle, The L. A.

Lambda Literary Award Finalist A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
Named a best book of 2019 by Parade

The Light Years is a joyous and defiant coming-of-age memoir set during one of the most turbulent times in American history

This stunningly beautiful, original memoir is driven by a search for the divine, a quest that leads Rush into some dangerous places . . . The Light Years is funny, harrowing, and deeply tender. --Kate Tuttle, The L.A. Times

Rush is a fantastically vivid writer, whether he's remembering a New Jersey of 'meatballs and Windex and hairspray' or the dappled, dangerous beauty of Northern California, where 'rock stars lurked like lemurs in the trees.' Read if you loved... Just Kids by Patti Smith. --Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

"As mythic and wild with love, possibility, and danger as the decades it spans, you'll read The Light Years with your breath held. Brutal, buoyant and wise to the tender terror of growing up, Chris Rush has written a timeless memoir of boyhood in the American wilderness." --Emma Cline, author of The Girls

Chris Rush was born into a prosperous, fiercely Roman Catholic, New Jersey family. But underneath the gleaming mid-century house, the flawless hostess mom, and the thriving businessman dad ran an unspoken tension that, amid the upheaval of the late 1960s, was destined to fracture their precarious facade.

His older sister Donna introduces him to the charismatic Valentine, who places a tab of acid on twelve-year-old Rush's tongue, proclaiming: "This is sacrament. You are one of us now."

After an unceremonious ejection from an experimental art school, Rush heads to Tucson to make a major drug purchase and, still barely a teenager, disappears into the nascent American counterculture. Stitching together a ragged assemblage of lowlifes, prophets, and fellow wanderers, he seeks kinship in the communes of the west. His adolescence is spent looking for knowledge, for the divine, for home. Given what Rush confronts on his travels--from ordinary heartbreak to unimaginable violence--it is a miracle he is still alive.

The Light Years is a prayer for vanished friends, an odyssey signposted with broken and extraordinary people. It transcends one boy's story to perfectly illustrate the slow slide from the optimism of the 1960s into the darker and more sinister 1970s. This is a riveting, heart-stopping journey of discovery and reconciliation, as Rush faces his lost childhood and, finally, himself.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Picador USA
Published: 03/24/2020
ISBN: 9781250251190
Pages: 384
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.30w x 1.10d
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SKU: 72940083957

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Alyssa P.
Port Orchard, US
★★★★★ 3
Good for the price but will not repurchase
Size: 9, Color: Grey
My husband loved these at first. Pros -easy to get on/off -stylish -comfortable -interior/exterior sole construction lasted longer than other more expensive shoes -price is great Cons -after less than a year the mouth of the shoe widened to a point where they slide off way too easy rendering them almost unwearable. -laces cannot be tightened
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Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2026
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napoleon cruz
Draper, US
★★★★★ 5
Great !!
Size: 8, Color: Black/Black, Size: 8, Color: Black/Black
This item is awesome! Fits good & lightweight ! .
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Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2026
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Larry
San Leandro, US
★★★★★ 5
Good value for the money.
Size: 9.5 Wide, Color: Beige
Comfortable right out of the box. Great style and well made. The more you wear the softer they get but maintain their overall appearance.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 25, 2026
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Amazon Customer
Draper, US
★★★★★ 5
Very good quality for a reasonable price.
Size: 10, Color: Grey
Very good quality, very soft, very comfortable, look amazing, I’m very happy.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2026
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Mike L.
Lowell, US
★★★★★ 4
Comfortable fit for slip-in fabric shoes
Size: 14, Color: Black/Black
My first experience with Marc Joseph. I typically purchase dress and casual work shoes from Florsheim and occasionally Rockport. I'm giving these four stars because the initial fit and feel appear solid. Depending on the shoe brand I wear a size 14 or 15. My feet are slightly wide but I don't alway need wide fit. These size 14 fit well with wide enough toe box. I've tried slip in shoes before and they just don't feel right. These somehow work and there is no heel slip. My only reservation is the high lip on the heel for slip-in and hope they dont catch pant hems. I gave 4 stars because I'll have to determine durability. Granted they are a light fabric shoe with a soft rubber tread. I'd like them to last for at least 6 months..and use them for business casual work wear during warm weather.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2026

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