Books Set in the 1950s

Book Summary

Let’s Call Her Barbie is a historical fiction novel that delves into the creation of one of the world’s most iconic dolls. The story follows the life of Ruth Handler, the co-founder of Mattel and the visionary behind the Barbie doll, as she navigates the challenges of the toy industry and societal expectations.

In 1956, the store shelves were filled with baby dolls that encouraged little girls to pretend to be mothers. Handler was determined to create a doll that empowered young girls to imagine a future beyond traditional roles. She assembled a team of creative rebels to create not just a doll but, ultimately, a legacy.

Book Summary

Growing up in the 1920s, Clara Harrington had a magical childhood as the daughter of renowned author Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham. Bronwyn became a national sensation when, at the age of just twelve, she wrote a book in an invented language.

But when Clara is just 8 years old, her mother goes missing off the coast of South Carolina. Not only does this leave her daughter and husband brokenhearted, but it also dashes the hopes of ever translating the sequel to her book.

Years later, in 1952, Clara is an illustrator raising a daughter of her own. Out of the blue, she is contacted by a strnager in London named Charlie Jameson who claims to have discovered a handwritten dictionary of her mother’s lost language. Clara is skeptical but can’t help but be intrigued.

Together with her daughter, Wynnie, Clara crosses the Atlantic. When they arrive, London is experiencing a deadly natural disaster—the Great Smog. It’s too much for young Wynnie’s asthma, so Charlie invites them to seek refuge at his family’s retreat in the Lake District. There, Clara must find the courage to uncover the truth about her mother and the story she left behind.

Book Summary

Sarah Dunbar, an honors student at her previous high school, is placed in remedial classes when she becomes one of the first Black students to attend the formerly all-white Jefferson High School in Virginia. She is spit on and tormented by not only classmates but also teachers.

Linda Hairston is the teenage daughter of one of the town’s most vocal opponents of school integration. She’s always been taught that the races should be separate but equal, but when she’s assigned to work on a school project with Sarah, she’ll have to confront this notion head-on.

Told through alternating perspectives, we see both girls confront deeply ingrained prejudices as they begin to question the societal norms they’ve been taught.

Book Summary

Following her years volunteering with the Red Cross in Nazi-occupied Europe during WWII, Louise is still adjusting to her new postwar role as a housewife. When she comes across a necklace at a secondhand shop, she recognizes the name of the Paris deparatment store on the box and is ceratin she’s seen the jewelry before. She thinks that the necklace might even hold the key to the mysterious death of her friend, Franny.

With help from her former boss, Louise follows a trail of clues to Paris where she discovers the dark history of Lévitan, a once glamorous department store that served as a Nazi prison during the war. She uncovers the story of Helaine, a Jewish woman who was imprisoned within the store after being separated from her husband when the Germans invaded France.

As Louise works to trace the connection between Lévitan, the necklace, and Franny’s death, there are forces working against her determined to keep the truth buried.

Book Summary

House of Eve alternates perspectives of our main characters in 1950s Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Ruby’s story is told in first person perspective as she tries to become the first person in her lower-income family to attend higher education. However, her plans are threatened when she begins to fall for a Jewish boy.

Eleanor’s story is told from the third person perspective as she arrives in D.C. with equal parts ambition and secrets. Like Ruby, Eleanor’s plans are changed when she falls for a man, William, at Howard University. William is from one of Washington’s elite, wealthy Black families, and his parents are picky about who is good enough to join them.

While this setup feels like a romance novel, this is a fast-moving historical fiction novel that will take you into a piece of history you may know little about. Don’t miss the author’s note at the end!

Book Summary

As the head costume designer for Lux Pictures in Hollywood, Lena Taylor hears startling confessions from some of the era’s biggest movie stars. Not only is she good at keeping their secrets, but she also has an even more dramatic scandal of her own.

Not that long ago, Lena was known as Elsie Gruner. The daughter of an Ohio dressmaker, her gift for fashion design earned her a spot at a prestigious art academy in Rome. There, a charismatic friend named Julia introduced her to a world of shadowy jazz clubs, code words, and mysterious deliveries. But when someone wound up dead, Elsie was forced to flee to avoid being caught up in a sinister international plot.

Her new life in Hollywood is glamorous, but she can’t stop looking over her shoulder. When she gets engaged to a screenwriter, she fears that the new spotlight on her will allow others to see through her façade.

Book Summary

Set against the backdrop of the Iranian Coup, Roya, an idealistic teenage girl finds a literary oasis in the neighborhood book and stationery shop.

The owner introduces her to his favorite customer, the handsome Rumi, who has a passion for justice and poetry. The two fall in love, but are separated on the eve of their marriage. Finally, they are reunited sixty years later when both are living in America. Together, they discover the truth of what really happened all those years ago in the town square.

Book Summary

Nora Breen has been a nun for thirty years, but when her friend and former novice, Frieda, suddenly stops sending letters, Nora asks to be released from her vows and leaves her convent to investigate. Frieda had been residing at Gulls Nest, a seaside boarding house in Gore-on-Sea in Kent, and her abrupt silence causes Nora concern.

Assuming a false identity, Nora checks into Gulls Nest, only to find herself amidst a cast of eccentric residents, each harboring secrets. When fellow guests begin dying under bizarre circumstances, Nora’s quest to find Frieda intertwines with a deeper mystery. Nora confronts a hidden past as she delves into the lives of the boarding house’s inhabitants.

Book Summary

Kate feels stuck in her family’s failing restaurant in San Fransisco. She jumps at the chance to escape when her grandfather makes a cryptic plea for her to “find a beautiful stranger.” This search takes her to the Hotel del Coronado near San Diego, where the movie Some Like it Hot is being filmed.

When she’s offered a position at the glamorous hotel, it feels like a dream come true. And her life continues to get better as new romance blossoms. However, the hotel has ghosts from the past, just like Kate. Sixty years earlier, a guest died at the hotel and still haunts the halls. The life of that turn-of-the-century guest and Kate’s present intertwine in surprising ways.

Book Summary

This novel centers around three friends from very different backgrounds who share an apartment above a Paris bookstore.

Margot is a 22-year-old Australian who is falling in love with Paris for the second time in her life. She yearns to feel like a real Parisian and to catch the eye of Peter Mountbatten, a distant cousin of the Queen. She’s certain a Dior gown could help her achieve both!

Gina hails from a blue-blooded American family that has recently fallen on hard times. She runs away to Paris, where she works in the bookstore by day while writing a novel of her own at night. When she receives an invitation to a high-society ball at the American Embassy, she needs a stunning gown to impress the man who jilted her, who is also on the guest list.

French chef Charlotte is grew up with brothers and is one of only a few women working in a male-dominated restaurant industry. She’s never felt pretty, especially compared to her mother, and she’s always been more interested in her career than fashion. But something is about to change.

Margot proposes a plan for the three roommates to share the cost of one stunning Christian Dior gown. Each contributes from her savings, and they’ll all get a turn to wear the gown. None could have predicted how this dress would change their lives.

Book Summary

When thirteen-year-old Jubie and her family, including three siblings, her mother, and the family’s black maid, Mary Luther, headed from North Carolina to Florida on vacation, she had no idea the summer trip would change her life forever.

As the family drives further south, Jubie starts noticing more anti-integration signs and racial tension. Soon, her mother finds it more difficult to find a safe place for Mary Luther to use the restroom. But Jubie still never predicted the shocking turn their trip would take. She’s left confronting her parents’ failings and wondering where her own convictions lie.

Book Summary

At the Cannes Film Festival in 1955, Grace Kelly sought refuge in a small boutique to escape the press’s flash bulbs. She became fast friends with the shop owner, Sophie Duval, and even created a plan to help Sophie’s struggling perfume business.

James Henderson, a British press photographer following Grace Kelly, also likes Sophie. The following year, James is assigned to cover Grace Kelly’s wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco. James hopes he’ll also have the opportunity to be reunited with Sophie.

Book Summary

Briarwood House is an all-female boardinghouse in Washington DC, where secrets hide behind white picket fences. It’s 1950 when the mysterious widow Grace moves into the attic. She throws attic-room dinner parties for her new friends, including a beautiful English wife and mother, a police officer’s daughter who is involved with a gangster, a baseball star frustrated with the end of the female league after WW2, and a woman who threw herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare. 

While Grace’s dinner parties are healing to the women, she also has her own secrets…and there may be an enemy within the group. 

Book Summary

For more than half a century, scientists knew her only as HeLa, but the full story of Henrietta Lacks deserves to be heard. 

When Henrietta fell ill, she was treated in the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital. While hospitalized, she had a tissue sample taken without her consent. Those cells became the first “immortal” human cells grown in culture. Still alive today, the HeLa cells have been used to develop the polio vaccine, discover cancer treatments, advance gene mapping, and much more. 

It wasn’t until more than 20 years after Henrietta’s death that her family learned of her “immortality.” With the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the news was devastating to the Lacks family.

Book Summary

Nick Russo, a hardworking reporter from a Brooklyn working-class background, is determined to keep his personal life private, especially as a gay man in an era of widespread homophobia.

His orderly world is disrupted when Andy Fleming joins the newsroom. Andy’s newspaper-tycoon father wants him to take over the family business, but Andy can barely take care of himself. He has agreed to work at the newspaper for one year, but he expects to hate every moment of it.

Time and again, Nick rescues Andy from his newsroom mistakes. Despite their differences, the two strike up an unlikely friendship, and Nick finds himself increasingly drawn to Andy’s warmth and vulnerability.

Book Summary

Betty Stern turned 18 in 1951 and was looking forward to her last summer at her grandparents’ Jewish summer resort before heading off to college. She had big dreams of becoming a fashion editor in NYC.

During that life-changing summer, Betty collapses at the end of the beauty pageant, which ends up being the last time the pageant is held. In 2020, a financially-struggling manicurist decides to bring it back. By this time, Betty is in her late 80s, and no one knows she was the last winner or why the pageant ended.

Book Summary

This historical fiction tells the true story of Ann Lowe, who was one of the most famous dress designers of the twenties through the sixties. Her story began in Tampa, where she learned to be a seamstress from her mother and grandmother, a former slave. 

At only 12, Ann was married to an older, alcoholic, man and saw her dreams slipping away. However, an encounter with a wealthy socialite changed her life forever. She has the opportunity to escape her marriage and earn a living by designing and sewing clothing for Florida’s society elite.

By 1953, Ann has a dress shop in New York and is preparing for the society wedding of the decade – Jacqueline Bouvier is marrying John F. Kennedy, Jr. However, less than a week before the wedding, a disaster occurs at her dress shop, and she’s forced to recreate Jackie’s dress, and others, on an impossible timeline.

Book Summary

Young Kya, who was left to fend for herself in the North Carolina marsh in the 1950s, will steal your heart from the beginning.

Locals know Kya as the “Marsh Girl.” She lives away from other humans and has only attended one day of school, but finds companions in nature all around her. While traditional school was not a good fit, she is always eager to learn. Eventually, she finds a friend who agrees to help her read.

The book has a split timeline between Kya’s formative years in the 1950s and an incident in 1969. A handsome boy from town is found dead, and the locals immediately suspect Kya.

Book Summary

While this book can be read as a stand-alone, we recommend reading The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek first.

Honey has been hiding from the law her entire life. She is the daughter of a blue-skinned packhorse librarian from the town of Troublesome Creek. When Honey’s parents are both arrested, she takes over her mom’s treacherous packhorse library route, delivering books to the remote hollers of Appalachia. 

Honey learns that if she wants to keep bringing books to the families that need them most, she has to fight to keep her place on the route and in the world. As she works, she also learns more about the extraordinary women who run the hills.

Book Summary

Nine-year-old Andrea and her brother Pablo had only known the tiny Massachusetts factory town of Woronoco before their mother abruptly moved them to the mountains of Puerto Rico. When they arrive in the village, the siblings are left with family while their mother disappears.

Months later, things are different when Andrea and Pablo return to Massachusetts. Andrea finds herself stuck between family values and American culture while also navigating what it means to grow up a girl in the 1950s.

Book Summary

As the Queen’s coronation approaches, London is ready to celebrate. Coronation Year takes us into the lives of three residents of London’s historic Blue Lion as the historic day approaches. 

Edie owns the Blue Lion, and is thrilled that the coronation route will pass her door. The young queen has no idea she’s about to save the business of an equally young hotelier. 

Artist James is a war hero, but finds that the world still disdains his Indian ancestry. However, at the Blue Lion, Edie makes him feel at home. 

Stella is a photographer and Holocaust survivor with a new position at Picture Weekly magazine. As she learns more about her new profession, she finds a way to honor the past and provide hope for her future. 

As threats counter the excitement of the upcoming coronation, Edie and her friends must uncover the truth.

Book Summary

This young adult historical fiction focuses on life in post-war Spain under Franco’s dictatorship. In 1957, the regime needed money and opened the country to Americans, hoping for investment. Eighteen-year-old Daniel travels with his oil tycoon father from Houston to Madrid.

Daniel brings his camera, eager to explore the city beyond the image that Franco is projecting to the world. Along with Ana, the young hotel maid tasked with assisting his family, Daniel discovers and documents the atrocities happening in the fascist regime.

Book Summary

Promising physics student Megs is attending Oxford in 1950 and prefers facts to creativity. However, her beloved but critically ill, 8-year-old brother is obsessed with a world created in a book – The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. When he asks her to find out where Narnia came from, she can’t refuse his plea.

When she tracks down the Lewis brothers, who are also at Oxford, they graciously invite her for tea. While they fill her with stories she can pass along to her brother, she doesn’t understand why he won’t answer her most important question about the origin of Narnia.

Book Summary

Eleven-year-old Donal lives deep in the Montana Rockies with his grandmother. However, when she needs surgery, she decides to send Donal to her sister in Wisconsin. Sadly, Aunt Kate is a tough woman to live with, unlike Gram. And it’s not just Donal that finds her difficult. Aunt Kate’s husband, Herman the German, is also getting tired of her tyrannical nature. 

When Kate sends Donal back to Montana on the bus, Herman the German decides to travel with him. Along the way, they meet an interesting cast of characters and find themselves in all kinds of misadventures.

Book Summary

This entire novel takes place over the course of 10 days in 1954. Eighteen-year-old Emmett has finished his term on a work farm, where he was sent after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter. The warden drives him home to Nebraska, where he plans to pick up his 8-year-old brother before heading west for a fresh start.

However, Emmett discovers that two friends, Duchess and Wooly, from the work camp have stowed away in the trunk. The three teens and 8-year-old Billy adjust their plans and set out across the country together. The book is told from alternating points of view.

Book Summary

In the 17th and 18th centuries, British aristocracy began leaving their country estates for the spring and summer months for a series of balls, receptions, and other social events. The season culminated with debutantes – the daughters of the upper class – being presented to the King and Queen in London.

Last Dance of the Debutante is a historical fiction novel set in 1958. When it was announced that this would be the last year debutantes would be presented to the royal court, thousands of eager parents flooded the palace with letters seeking the coveted invitation for their daughters to curtsy before young Queen Elizabeth as they came out into society. 

The story follows three different young women – Lily, an aspiring university student who agrees to be a debutante to appease her traditional mother; Leana, whose apparent perfection hides a darker side; and ambitious Katherine who dreams of a career but is willing to help her parents find a place among the elite. But the season takes an unexpected turn when Lily learns a devastating secret that could destroy her entire family.

Book Summary

Bill Bryson is famous for his humorous travel writing, but in this nostalgic and hilarious memoir, he reflects on growing up in middle America in the 1950s in the middle of the baby boomer generation.

Using his childhood imaginary superhero persona to tell his story, he tells his story of growing up in Des Moines, bringing his loving but eccentric family to life.

Book Summary

In 1953, a new “emancipation” bill was being considered in the US Congress. However, the Chippewa Council knows that the bill isn’t about freedom; it’s a threat to their rights and land. Thomas is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant near the reservation and serves as a Council member.

Valedictorian Patrice also works at the plant, using all her money to support her mother and brother. Her older sister, Vera, left the reservation to live in Minneapolis, but the family hasn’t heard from her in months. Eventually, she travels to Minnesota, trying to track down Vera.

The lives of Thomas and Patrice interact with many other memorable characters on and off the reservation as they encounter the best and worst of human nature.

Book Summary

Ivorie Walker is only in her early 30s, but she is considered an old maid by those in her Tennessee town. When a feral, dirty-faced boy begins sneaking onto her land to steal food from her garden, she starts on an unlikely path to motherhood. 

Every time he flees her garden and heads back into the hills, she has more questions about where he came from and how she can help him. But, as she begins to uncover the answers, she angers many in town who would rather she let secrets stay secret.