Customer Reviews

Soliah: The Sara Jane Olson Story

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a song of the era said: Something happened here. What it is ain't exactly clear.

Kathleen Ann Soliah ("pronounced SOH lee ah - accent on the first syllable") was born January 16, 1947 in Fargo, North Dakota. She was involved with the "Second Team" of the Symbionese Liberation Army in California in the 1970's. (Most of the "First Team," who kidnapped Patty Hearst, was killed in a shoot-out with the LAPD in 1974.) There were bank robberies. There was a bomb placed underneath a police car.

Time passed.

In Minnesota on June 16, 1999, Sara Jane Olson, community activist, community theater actress, and doctor's wife in Highland Park, "one of St. Paul's most upscale neighborhoods," was arrested by a cadre of law enforcement personnel while driving her minivan, and extradited to California to stand trial as Soliah for alleged sins of the 70's.

This is an intriguing part of Americana. But this book does not do it justice. Nor is the reader left, in the end, with a clear picture of whether justice has been done.

Ms. Soliah is introduced in the beginning of the book, but then she all but disappears until "Act III" at page 113. In this interim, the author attempts to offer an historical context of the times.

From her picture in the back of the book, suburban Twin Cities author Sharon Darby Hendry looks like she might be a part of the Baby Boomer generation- but from the way she describes the era, this reader did not get the sense that Hendry was THERE. If she was alive during these turbulent times, one gets the impression that she was busy procuring pedicures at the Edina Dayton's and attending Tupperware® parties. It's in the nuances and simple things. For instance: Arlo Guthrie's anthem "Alice's Restaurant" is directly quoted as "you could get anything you wanted there" (p.12) Uh, not exactly. I guess you had to be there. Ok, all you Boomers out there, Start singing! "You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant."

Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley's version of the 1968 Democratic National Convention is unquestioningly set forth, even though it is later reported that "Attorney General Ramsey Clark was reluctant to enforce the new provisions [of the 1968 U.S. Civil Rights Act, which made interstate travel with the intent to incite a riot a federal crime] and viewed the Chicago violence as a `police riot.'" (p.22)

To approximate the historical context, I suggests that you would be better informed getting Reunion: A Memoir, by Tom Hayden; In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution by Susan Brownmiller; and Father Andrew M. Greeley's novelized retrospective: September Song: A Cronicle of the O'Malley's in the Twentieth Century (Family Saga).

I wanted to learn from this book by a local author. But the slant and downright mistakes caused me to view the entire work with a skeptical eye. The book ends with the 2001 pre-trial Sacramento court "reunion" of those accused in the robbery of the Carmichael Bank - in which Myrna Opsahl, who was there to deposit the weekend's Church offering - was slain. Yes. Something happened here. But what it is ain't exactly clear in this book.

/TundraVision, Amazon Reviewer

The Last book on the Symbiones Liberation Army was written 20 years ago (Every Secret Thing, by Patricia Hearst, released in 1988 paperback as "Patty Hearst" in conjuction with the movie by the same name). Beyond this the books seemed to stop in mid to late 1970's so excluding Hearst's autobiography, the first book in a quarter century on the SLA. Opinions on the SLA and Hearst have often been politically charged with the strongest opinions often held by those who have limited knowlege of the subject.

Sharon Darby Hendry, like myself, is a very long term Minnesota resident. We were both here back in the 1970's. Quite frankly, the SLA wasn't a significant Minnesota story in the 1970's. Even though I lived among the lefties in Dinkeytown all during the 1970's, and even though I had a loose connnection to SLA member Cammillia Hall I had to take a crash course in the SLA after the June 1999 arrest of Kathlenn Soliah here in Minnesota. I followed the case since the June 1999 Soliah arrest through my website ... reading more than a dozen old books on the SLA. Most are rare and unavailable so the first part of the book SoLiAh is a good primer on this era. It upsets the romantic view of the SLA by including the unpleasant realities, such as the assasination of Oakland's first Black School Superitendent Marcus Foster by the SLA, which, ironically, preached an anti-racism credo.

The portion of SoLiAh dealing with the June 16, 1999 arrest and aftermath explained the dramatic events and they unfolded from a Minnesota perspective. With nine trial delays, at least five lawyer changes and the plea "flip-flops" the book had to follow events as they were unfolding. The last dramatic event was the January 2002 arrests in the Myrna Opsahl murder (the "Harris's" and Borton have since made bail, Soliah-Olson is serving time for the LA plea). Is they story and the book SoLiAh open ended?

Absolutely! It looks like the Opsahl murder trial won't start before 2003 at the soonest. Has justice been done and will it be done? That is for the reader to decide but they can better ponder it with information and background on the case. The Opsahl murder was long considered unprosecutable even though it was obvious that the SLA did it. Just getting the January 2002 indictments is one of the greatest cold case revivals in modern history. Reading SoLiAh with an open mind will help the reader, especially those, not "there", or with a romantacized view of the old far left to understand it and to also understand the roots of the domestic terrorism threat facing the USA now.

...

I would give this a 3.5 star rating if Amazon allowed me to do so. This book contains interesting and useful information about the Patricia Hearst/SLA/Kathleen Soliah story, and yet somehow does not truly capture the "feel" or atmosphere of the times and events it describes. Hendry's explanation of opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War is both oversimplified and overly brief, which limits her ability to analyze and explain the appeal of the New Left in general, much less the desperation and rage of the extreme, militant, revolutionary left of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Without such analysis, members of the SLA and Weatherman factions seem nearly inexplicable in their attitudes and actions, and this in turn limits Hendry's ability to make readers comprehend all that was at stake, or seemed to be at stake, in the SLA's worldview. Hendry could have explained this more effectively without, as one reviewer put it, "romanticizing" the violent, fringe New Left at this time.

This book is most useful as a supplement to Patricia Hearst's memoir, _Every Secret Thing_, and to a good overview and analysis of the 1960s student and New Left movements, such as Gitlin's _The Sixties_ or Kazin and Isserman's _America Divided_. But no reader should pick up this book expecting to get a full or sophisticated explanation of how the New Left's early commitment to democratic socialism and participatory democracy morphed, for some activists, by the late 1960s and early 1970s, into an honest conviction that no peaceful solutions for change truly existed, that the U.S. politico-economic system was hopelessly corrupt and doomed, and therefore that electoral politics and working within the system were utterly pointless. Only by understanding such a worldview can readers truly begin to comprehend both the "logic" and the extremism of groups like the SLA. And only then can readers begin to understand what's at stake in the Soliah case and aftermath.

What brings an obviously bright young woman to an obviously corrupt organization like the SLA and then, even more mysteriously, has her completely change her stripes and become, inexplicably, a soccor mom. Because Sarah Jane lived in my back yard, so to speak, I wanted to know who she was: the soccor mom or the terrorist. The book refused to answer that question for me, as it should, but rather than making judgements it told her story, using facts and the voices of people in Soliah/Olson's life. This book was better than a summer mystery and reads like a novel: I couldn't put it down. I heartily recommend the book.

In the beginning, you think what's the big deal let the woman go back to her new life. At the end, you think, let her rot in prison. It does give you the whole story if you can get over the mountains of insignificant details!

Soliah captures the in-depth history of the 60's and 70's and wraps the story around Kathleen Soliah. It is difficult to understand how this woman could create a false identy for herself. Particularly because she lied to her three daughters about her name, age, and her deceitful past. She activily participated in the events of the SLA and should pay the price for her criminal actions. I would recommend this novel to the true-crime seekers and everyone who lived in this time era. Also, to the younger generation who are interested in the Patty Hearst / SLA saga.