Duane Parker's Reviews > The Outsiders

Occasionally a book is written at the perfect time, with the perfect story, with the perfect group of characters; and it is written with a passion and an insight that make it unique, that distinguishes it from any other book and any other story. And sometimes it defines a generation, or a culture or sub-culture of that generation. That, my friends, is what this book does. Is that what 15 year old Susan Eloise Hinton had in mind when she started to write this book? Probably not, but she was affected by what she saw in her 1965 Oklahoma high school; the presence of two rival gangs, the Greasers and the Socs. It inspired her to write a story, their story, and by doing so it resonated across a nation, across a generation, and it became what it is today, a symbol of that generation, and a classic in American literature.