Drop City was published by Viking in 2003. Drop City is a California commune in 1970 — a collection of hippies, drifters, and idealists living communally on a property that is about to be condemned. When they are forced off the land, they decide to relocate to the Alaskan bush, where one member has inherited a remote homestead. The novel alternates between the commune’s disastrous attempt at wilderness living and the story of Sess Harder, an Alaskan trapper whose subsistence lifestyle represents the genuine self-sufficiency the hippies only fantasize about.
The collision between counterculture idealism and actual wilderness competence drives the novel’s comedy: the commune members cannot hunt, cannot build, cannot preserve food, and cannot cooperate without the consumer infrastructure they claim to reject. Sess Harder, by contrast, possesses all these skills but none of their ideological pretensions.
The Back-to-the-Land Myth
Drop City is Boyle’s definitive statement on the American fantasy of returning to nature. From Thoreau to the communes of the 1960s to the off-grid movement of the 2020s, the dream of self-sufficiency has attracted people who underestimate what it actually requires. Boyle’s hippies are the latest in a long line of Americans who confuse the desire for simplicity with the ability to achieve it.
Collecting Drop City
First edition (Viking, New York, 2003): Boards with dust jacket.
Approximate market values:
- Fine in dust jacket: $25–$50
- Very good: $10–$25
Projected values (2026–2036): Moderate appreciation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Was Drop City a real commune? Boyle’s commune is fictional, but the name echoes the real Drop City in southern Colorado (1965-1977), one of the first rural hippie communes. Boyle’s version is a composite drawn from multiple real communes of the era.