With biting humor and a firm sense of place, Albert (The Second Story Man) evokes a scene that was both exciting and dangerous: the New York bohemian subculture in the early 1960s. Archeology student Helene Elphrick desperately wants to shed both her controlling Jewish parents and her middle-class morality. Lonely and vulnerable, she is an easy mark for Zalman Finster, a Hasidic rabbi turned artist who introduces the giddy young woman to the avant-garde cultural scene and to a wide variety of mood-altering drugs. With sharply perceptive writing that catches the essence of provocative characters, the author takes Helene through the wildly energetic bohemian counterculture of the day.