My Review
Lost in the Summer of '69 is the story of three women in one family -- Leanne Miller is the perfect wife and mother, living in Ossining, New York with her husband and teenage daughter Nora. Nora is about to go to Yale as one of the first women accepted there. When Leanne's mother, a thwarted musician, goes missing in this summer of music festivals, Leanne and Nora take off on a long road trip to find her, traveling to old fashioned motels and festivals in their search.
I wanted to read this book because I love 1960's settings and the music festivals and summer setting sounded like a fun read. I absolutely loved Eliza Knight's book The Queen's Faithful Companion (about Queen Elizabeth and her favorite corgi dog), so that sparked my interest in this novel as well.
The book is told in the alternating viewpoints of the three characters. They all evolve over the summer. Leanne and Nora are not very close initially. Leanne is very prim and proper, the perfect 1960's housewife. She learns over the road trip summer to be more relaxed and take life a day at a time. Nora grows closer to her mother as they search for Eleanor, stopping at diners and reading popular paperback novels out loud in the car. Nora also experiences first love with a young man who is writing articles about the different music festivals they visit. I have to add that I saw some similarities between Leanne and Nora and Betty and Sally Draper from Mad Men -- down to the Ossining suburbs.
Eleanor's story is a sadder one. She takes off because she has a diagnosis of early onset dementia. We see her having occasional memory lapses as she travels to festivals, becoming a sort of celebrity as a grandmother with a guitar - and the voice of an angel. She performs on stage with one of the musicians she grows close to ... but she knows she will eventually have to go back home.
This is a well written novel. The period details were exceptional. I enjoyed the music festivals, and hearing about the singers and bands the women encounter or hear. I especially loved the smaller moments with Leanne and Nora, the old fashioned motels, the road trip, the diners and truck stops, the books they read aloud together.
I recommend Lost in the Summer of '69 as a summer read for anyone who loves 1960's settings, classic rock, or Americana road trips ... and especially for anyone who enjoys a multi-generational family story.
Thanks to Sourcebooks Landmark and Netgalley for an advanced reading copy of this book.
