Piercy's eighth novel, Fly Away Home, is a most successful attempt to
wed social consciousness with domestic drama. In this novel, Daria Walker
awakens from the illusion — or delusion — of her upwardly mobile marriage, and
her picture-perfect, sheltered, suburban life. Forced to confront her husband's
adultery and his unethical, exploitive business practices, Daria does indeed
grow, gain awareness, and become politicized. When she learns her husband,
Ross, has been hiring arsonists to burn his own buildings, Daria draws her head
out of the sand, and joins former tenants in their quest for safe shelter.
Daria's postdivorce affair with a working-class carpenter (and bookworm)
returns her to the core values — mutual and self-respect, the worth of work —
with which she was raised, values she may have lost sight of during her years
in "suburban semi-slumber."
