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MONTALVO BAY by Osmond Molarsky

MONTALVO BAY

By

Pub Date: Nov. 1st, 1976
Publisher: Walck

When Montalvo Bay is threatened by real estate developers, student body president Ernie Hutchins mobilizes Harper Valley High (it could be the locale of that notorious PTA) to elect a popular social studies teacher to the post of County Supervisor. Molarsky is at pains to demonstrate Ernie's wholesomeness (despite his longhair parents) and to expose the utter ruthlessness of the big business interests, so that this begins like a thinly fictionalized new politics campaign manual and ends with a slam-bang finale of dirty tricks and a successful guerrilla action to short circuit an illegal blasting operation. Time seems to have passed Harper Valley by--the ""good vibes"" emanating from their under-30 candidate, one campaign worker's close call with a bursting water bed, even beachfront tract homes costing less than 23 thousand, strike us as left over from a few years back. And that goes double for the notion that one good battle wins the war. Even as programmed incentive, Ernie's campaign fails to deliver.