[Union Dues is a] long, well-written, ultimately formless tale about a kid from a coal-mining family who in 1969 leaves West Virginia for Boston to find his brother, a burnt-out Vietnam veteran. The guts of the story concern the boy's haphazard entree into a radical Boston commune that defines itself somewhere between early Weatherman and present-day U.S. Labor Party. The desperation, pretentions, honesty and hopelessness of such politics are captured cleanly and without much condescension, which makes Union Dues virtually unique among the political novels of the last ten years. (p. 119)

Greil Marcus, in Rolling Stone (© 1977 by Rolling Stone Magazine; all rights reserved; reprinted by permission), Issue 247, September 8, 1977.