What goes through your mind when you think of the Summer of ’69 – free love, psychedelic drugs, Woodstock, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Charles Manson, Chappaquiddick, Vietnam, San Francisco and the moon landing-so many things.  I was too young to be anything other than an observer. But what a year it was.

Elin Hilderbrand takes us back to that turbulent time in her latest Nantucket read about the Foley/Levin family.  She explores the unique dynamics of families when life happens with all its unpredictability.

Kate’s son, Tiger, gets drafted out of high school.  She wants him to go to college and avoid the war, but he refuses and enlists and ends up in the thick of the fighting in Vietnam.  This starts Kate down a summer filled with remorse and alcohol. 

Kate, her children, Blair, Kirby, Tiger and Jessie and her second husband David spend the summers in Nantucket with Kate’s mother Exalta.  The name sure fits the person.  The story line follows these family members as they acclimated to the ever-changing events of the summer of 1969.

As the counter-war on the establishment rages and the young people burn draft cards protesting the Vietnam War, Kate’s family gets caught up in the upheaval.  Blair, Kate’s oldest is married and having twins. Her husband didn’t want her to continue her studies or work.  She’s miserable.

Tiger is fighting in the war. Kirby is working for the summer on Martha’s Vineyard and getting into her own mishaps as only a young person can. And Jessie, only 13, falls in love with a young man staying in the family’s home.  What could go wrong?

What we enjoyed in this novel was the family dynamic and how each member grew over that summer, some in small ways and others in leaps and bounds. It’s an easy and delightful read.  It was fun for us to talk about that summer (most of us were in middle school-some a little younger).  We talked about how that year was as magical as it was scary to us with all its mixed messages.  We also talked about how different it was for women in 1969 and how we need to continue to go forward – never to go back.

Rating: 7.5 Photo by NASA on Unsplash

As a side note:  Mary Jo Kopechne babysat me when I was a small child.  My grandparents lived across the street from the Kopechne’s in Berkeley Heights. When she was in high school, she would babysit my brother and me when our parents went out with our grandparents. I was very young and don’t have a good memory of her, a bit here and there. But I do remember seeing her parents when I visited my grandparents over the years. Mary Jo was their only child.

It’s such a small world.