Hilderbrand throws in an occasional “far out”, party-line phone service to remind readers we’re reading the 1960s, but also slips up with modern language like “the N word” which only came into use about fifteen years ago. Her first historical fiction novel felt more modern than fifty years ago. SUMMER OF ‘69 isn’t one of my favorite Elin Hilderbrand novels. With a son Tiger fighting in Nam, college age Kirby working on Martha’s Vineyard, eldest daughter Blair pregnant with twins back in Boston, Kate only has thirteen-year-old Jessie with her at her mom’s Nantucket summer home. As the summer heats up, Ted Kennedy sinks a car in Chappaquiddick, man flies to the moon, and Jessie and her family experience their own dramatic upheavals along with the rest of the country.Īmid the war in Vietnam, the summer of 1969 brought the moon landing, Chappaquiddick and Woodstock. 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. Only-son Tiger is an infantry soldier, recently deployed to Vietnam. 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.
But like so much else in America, nothing is the same: Blair, the oldest sister, is marooned in Boston, pregnant with twins and unable to travel. Every year the children have looked forward to spending the summer at their grandmother’s historic home in downtown Nantucket. It’s 1969, and for the Levin family, the times they are a-changing. Summer of 69 – Welcome to the most tumultuous summer of the twentieth century. Four siblings experience the drama, intrigue, and upheaval of a summer when everything changed, in New York Times bestselling author Elin Hilderbrand’s first historical novel
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