Summer of '69

"A Pleasing, beach-ready read" (Booklist) in which four siblings, experience the drama, intrigue, and upheaval of a summer when everything changed

Welcome to the most tumultuous summer of the twentieth century. It's 1969, and for the Levin family, the time they are a-changing. Every year the children have looked forward to spending the summer at their grandmother's historic home in downtown Nantucket. But like so much else in America, this year nothing is the same: Blair, the eldest sister, is stranded in Boston, pregnant with twins and unable to travel. Middle sister Kirby, caught up in the thrilling vortex of civil rights protests and determined to be independent, takes a summer job on Martha's Vineyard. Beloved son Tiger is an infantry soldier, recently deployed to Vietnam. Thirteen-year-old Jessie suddenly feels like an only child, marooned in the house with her out-of-touch grandmother and her worried mother, each of them hiding a troubling secret.  

  As the summer heats up, Ted Kennedy sinks a car off Chappaquiddick, man lands on the moon, and Jessie and her family experience their own dramatic upheavals along with the rest of the country.

  Elin Hilderbrand tells a page-turning story, rich with the details of an era that shaped both a nation and an island thirty miles out to sea.