Lost in the Summer Of ’69
It’s 1969, and widow Eleanor Bell Strickland, age 69, longs for the free-spirited musician days of her youth. Although she’s been a dutiful housewife and mother for decades, she’s kept up with the current music, playing guitar in her own home. A diagnosis of dementia pushes her for one last try at joy, before she can no longer remember. Without telling her daughter or granddaughter of her plans, she flies to California, hoping to perform at an open mic event at a music festival there. Eleanor’s daughter, Leanne, a buttoned-up suburban housewife, is dreading the fall when her only daughter will leave for college. Nineteen-year-old Nora is looking forward to one last summer with her high school friends before she enters Yale in the first class of women admitted there. When Leanne and Nora discover Eleanor has taken off to California, they set out on a cross-country trip trying to “rescue” her. As the summer unfolds each will learn truths about herself, truths about each other, and emerge in the fall to follow new paths.
With lots of references to the great music of the ´60s, readers will find themselves humming along with Eleanor. The only backstory detail I did not find convincing is that teenage Eleanor had a guitar-playing, music-festival career in the era of Ragtime and Vaudeville. But all the 1960s research seems spot on, from my perspective as a child during those years. This will be a great book club book, as it covers three different eras of women’s lives and the choices available in each. Readers will find a lot to discuss, not only about the book, but about the paths their own lives have taken. The book includes a helpful reading group guide.
