There's a high degree of magic in a novel when you now and then find yourself so acutely frustrated by the self-destructive behavior of a character in it that you want to grab him by the shoulders and shake sense into him. Or her. Nor is the frustration eased by your awareness that of course this behavior stems from the very nature of the character and has a terrible inevitability.

Evan Hunter's Love, Dad has that magic. A long book but never a dull one, it deals with a segment of comparatively recent social history—the upsurge of youth against the parental Establishment under the impetus of the Vietnam conflict—which even in retrospect has the power to hit a good many nerves.

The focus throughout is split between two members of a single family, the Crofts: father Jamie and teen-age daughter Lissie. The period covered extends from...