"The quintessential hippie '60s novel." -Publishers Weekly

"One of the finest novels to come out of the great social, psychic and moral convulsion called the sixties." -Pete Hamill, author of A Drinking Life

"A novel in overdrive -- vulgar, outrageous, totally hyperbolic, exceptionally funny, and written with an uncommon attention to the wonders of language...superb." -Sheldon Frank, New York Times Book Review

"A remarkable first novel...Funny, lyric...The pace is relentless." -Baltimore Sun

Shedding Skin, Robert Ward's prestigious literary debut, won a National Endowment for the Arts Award as one of the best novels of 1972.

Drawing on a wealth of personal experience, the author takes young Bobby Ward on a wild emotional ride, as he faces a perpetual conflict between idealism and despair. From Baltimore to Haight-Ashbury, through sex, the women's movement, war, and materialism, Shedding Skin renders a tour de force of this momentous time.