Patty Hearst was a rich man’s daughter, kidnapped for ransom by a group whose demands were delivered through public “communiqués” sent to radio stations. Clearly she would have made news in any era, but it took something more than the facts of her case, spectacular though they may have been, to account for the impact she had on the American public (between February 1974 and March 1976, she was on the cover of Newsweek seven times). The central question about her experience was also being asked in a million tiny dramas that were unfolding across the country—ruptures that turned on blue jeans and broken curfews and birth-control pills, rather than on joining a gang of armed revolutionaries: Had this well-tended and much-loved daughter really crossed over? And if she had, was she so far gone that even her own people might not want her back?