Sandy

Sandy’s importance lies in the distance she travels from the edges of political life toward its risks: once too shy to join in chanting at an antiwar rally, she becomes a speaker, a frightened point of contact for survivors of the cadre, and later a source of practical support for Jenny and Pauline. She is not presented as a cadre member. Instead, the novel follows how public spectacle and personal ties pull an ordinary acquaintance into events that exceed her original sympathies and confidence.

Identity and Introduction

Sandy belongs to the loose social circle around Frazer and Tom Milner, but she is not one of Frazer’s close companions. When she calls him for help, he takes time to recognize her; in his memory she had been a familiar face at large parties, often listening to someone play guitar. The narration places her at the periphery of this network, where ties are real but thin. That marginality makes her a plausible person to call in a crisis: she knows Frazer, yet is not so close to him that their relationship dictates what she must do.

Her first defining public action comes at a memorial rally for the cadre. Sandy has watched the news coverage of the group’s kidnapping of Pauline, its bank robbery, and the shootout and fire in Los Angeles in which the members were believed to have died. Their actions had alienated many people while they were alive, but the scale of their deaths alters the public response. At the rally, Sandy gives a fiery speech and is cheered. The change is striking because she had previously been too shy even to shout slogans in a crowd.

The Rally and the Survivors

As the rally breaks up, a disheveled young woman approaches Sandy, claims to have known the dead comrades, and says there are still ways Sandy can help. The visitor is one of the people the police believe have been killed: the supposed deaths concealed the survival of three cadre members. In a single afternoon, Sandy has moved from timid observer to forceful speaker and then to a frightened, reluctant helper. Her response is to call Frazer, turning a personal acquaintance into a channel through which the survivors can seek assistance.

The sequence makes Sandy’s political involvement less a settled commitment than a rapid change in circumstance. She has already been affected by the public story of the cadre: their deaths have, in effect, softened the public judgment of their earlier actions. Then a survivor’s appeal places a human request directly in front of her. Sandy is not shown welcoming the danger, but neither does she simply dismiss the visitor. Her call to Frazer begins a chain of contacts that helps connect the fugitives to people with resources and experience.

Sandy’s role remains one of a helper rather than a planner. Frazer later organizes the movement of Pauline, Yvonne, and Juan and arranges for a safe house and for the fugitives’ guns to be stored with old friends. The narrative does not assign those logistical decisions to Sandy. It does, however, place her among the acquaintances whose links to Frazer and the fugitives make those arrangements possible. Their support network is assembled out of personal connections, not a formal organization with dependable loyalties.

Connections to Frazer and Tom Milner

Sandy’s call brings her back into Frazer’s orbit, but the relationship remains uneven. She knows him through the social circles of his earlier life, while he initially struggles to identify her. Later, when Jenny and Pauline are hiding in the Bay Area, Frazer searches for Jenny and questions Sandy. Sandy says she does not know where the women are and holds to that answer despite Frazer’s anger and insistence. She does not pass along his message at once, in keeping with the fugitives’ request that their location remain undisclosed.

Sandy eventually tells Jenny that Frazer had been in the city looking for her. She explains that he seemed urgent and upset, and that she had resisted his questions. Her account also reveals a conflict with Tom: he believed they should keep their promise to Jenny and Frazer alike by passing on no message, while Sandy thought Jenny should be told. Sandy’s disclosure is therefore both a breach of silence and an act of care toward the fugitives. When Tom later confirms that Frazer had visited and says he did not think it worth upsetting Jenny and Pauline, Jenny thanks him for covering for them. The episode shows how trust in this circle is negotiated through competing obligations rather than simple allegiance.

Sandy’s relationship with Tom is itself unsettled. In May, after the women’s discussions and her own distress, she breaks up with him and moves in with Jenny and Pauline. She is described as staying awake through the night, sleeping by day, and struggling privately with the separation. Tom and Sandy later reconcile, and he returns to collect her belongings. Their reunion does not erase the tensions that had arisen over how to respond to Frazer; instead, the episode places their changing partnership alongside the practical choices each makes about the fugitives.

Life with Jenny and Pauline

When Jenny and Pauline return to North Berkeley, they arrive at the home Sandy shares with Tom. Jenny approaches in a modest disguise and asks whether Sandy has heard the Good News; Sandy takes a moment to recognize her. Pauline also introduces herself as someone Sandy may not remember, but Sandy remembers her and greets her coldly. Even so, Sandy pulls the two women inside. Recognition is not the same as easy welcome: her guarded response preserves the fear and strain of the earlier crisis, while letting them cross the threshold marks a renewed act of assistance.

Sandy also becomes part of the women’s learning circle. Alongside Jenny, Pauline, her younger sister Joanne, and Joanne’s housemate Lena, she takes part in practical lessons about firearms, beginning with their parts, categories, and principles rather than shooting. The group dismantles and cleans a 12-gauge shotgun, and the women discuss how they have often acted more knowledgeable than they felt around men. Sandy’s participation places her in a space where asking questions and learning openly are treated as valuable in themselves. The activity is framed not as preparation to hurt people but as a way to understand weapons and the assumptions surrounding their use. To keep the group from being observed, Jenny and Pauline cover the windows with curtains they make themselves.

This work broadens Sandy’s connection to Jenny and Pauline beyond emergency concealment. She is present in a collective, women-centered practice of learning, alongside Joanne and Lena, as the group examines both technical knowledge and the social confidence attached to it. The contrast with the rally is telling: Sandy had once discovered that she could speak publicly when the crowd’s attention gathered around the dead cadre; now she participates in a quieter setting where knowledge is built through shared questions and hands-on work.

Change and Narrative Significance

Sandy’s arc is a series of changes in what she is willing to do, not a conversion into a committed revolutionary. She moves from shy spectator to acclaimed speaker, then to an anxious intermediary when a survivor asks for help. Later she protects Jenny’s location from Frazer, revises that silence by telling Jenny about his search, and receives the fugitives when they return to her door. Each step is constrained by relationships: her connection to Frazer makes his appeal possible, her loyalty to Jenny shapes what she withholds, and her relationship with Tom complicates decisions about what should be disclosed.

The novel uses Sandy to show the fragile human scale of fugitive support. She is neither a wholly reliable political ally nor a detached bystander; she is frightened, sometimes divided from Tom, and still capable of choosing to help. Her story also links public memory to private consequence. The television images of the cadre’s deaths first contribute to the atmosphere in which Sandy speaks at the rally; the later discovery that some members survived turns that public sympathy into an immediate personal responsibility. By the time Jenny and Pauline reach her home again, Sandy’s earlier, reluctant involvement has become part of the fugitives’ continuing dependence on friends and acquaintances.