Though Harry is initially disturbed, the nihilistic Skeeter convinces him to forget about it Harry nonetheless worries about the effect it may have on Nelson.Ĭharlie suffers a heart attack while he and Janice are together, but she saves his life. The activities at Harry's house upset his middle-class, conservative neighbors, one of whom sets fire to the house in an attempt to put an end to the commune. Against the backdrop of the Summer of Love, Harry, Skeeter, and Jill do drugs, have sex, and debate religion, race relations, and other political issues of the 1960s while Nelson attempts to romance Jill. While Skeeter keeps Jill in sexual thrall to him with heroin, Harry and Nelson are both drawn to Jill for the different things she represents to them: lost innocence and sexual conquest for Harry, and first love and coming of age for Nelson. Seeking to fill the void left by Janice, Harry starts a commune, composed of himself Nelson Skeeter, a cynical, drug-dealing African-American Vietnam vet with messianic delusions and Jill, a wealthy, white, runaway teenager from Connecticut. When his wife leaves him for an eccentric Greek man named Charlie Stavros, Harry and his thirteen-year-old son Nelson are at a loss. Thirty-six, he feels that he is quickly approaching middle age and irrelevance, a fear he sees reflected in the economic decline of his hometown, Brewer, Pennsylvania. Rabbit Redux finds former high-school basketball star Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom working a dead-end job as a Linotype operator at the local printing plant. It is the second book in his 'Rabbit' series, beginning with Rabbit, Run and followed by Rabbit Is Rich, Rabbit At Rest, published from 1960 to 1990, and the related 2001 novella, Rabbit Remembered.

Rabbit Redux is a 1971 novel by John Updike.

John updike rabbit at rest