Whether you are participating in our Decades Reading Challenge or found this list while researching books about the 60s and 70s, you’ve come to the right place! Below, you’ll find a list of the best books set in the 1960s, and we also have a comprehensive list of 1970s titles.
Our recommended reading list of books set in the Sixties includes historical fiction novels that examine social and racial issues and books that capture the flair of the Swinging 60s. The list also includes memoirs and nonfiction books about the 1960s that provide insights into the era.
Literary Themes in Books About the Swinging Sixties
The Vietnam War, along with strong anti-war sentiment among young people opposed to U.S. involvement, dominated the 1960s. Civil Rights marches also defined the era and helped bring about positive changes, including the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
In the early 1960s, many Americans lived in fear of nuclear war as the Cold War escalated. Throughout the decade, the country mourned the losses of beloved leaders, including President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The 60s came to a close with a giant leap for mankind as the first astronauts set foot on the moon.
For additional historical context, check out the timeline of major world events included at the end of the post.
Highly-Rated Books About the 1960s
Historical Fake Dating
Off the Record
Sara Goodman Confino
Publication Date:
06/09/2026
Setting:
1962, Washington DC
Book Summary
In 1962, the newspaper typing pool offered very few advancement opportunities for women, especially for nice Jewish girls with ambitions beyond finding a husband. But Judy isn’t looking for a husband. She’s an aspiring reporter looking to make her mark in journalism.
When she answers her boss’s private line and hears a cryptic message in a Russian accent, it might be the scoop she needs to prove herself. She finds an ally in Jack, a charming reporter who is willing to follow her instincts. Plus, he can pose as her boyfriend to keep her parents off her back. Together they chase leads through a thrilling underground of secrets and spies stretching from Moscow to Havana to Texas. This story could make her career. Or get her killed.
About the Genre
While the primary trope of this historical romantic comedy is fake dating, it also features a strong enemies-to-allies dynamic, with a mystery/thriller element woven into the romance — blending a rom-com with a Cold War spy caper. Like Sara Goodman Confino’s previous novels, you’ll also find a heroine fiercely determined to prove herself in a man’s world.
More 1960s Books By This Author
We have come to ADORE everything Sara Goodman Confino writes, which includes several highly-rated novels set in the 1960s, including Don’t Forget to Write, Behind Every Good Man, and Good Grief. Any of them would be an excellent pick for this challenge.
In 1962, at the dawn of the jet-set era, two Pan Am stewardesses are navigating an adventurous new life in this historical fiction novel.
Judy Goodman and Beverly Caldwell had different reasons for seeking the coveted position of a Pan Am stewardess, but both were looking to put continents and oceans between them and their pasts. Judy is running away from an oppressive marriage in small-town Pennsylvania, while Beverly is leaving behind the gilded cage of her NYC society life.
By joining the elite team at Pan American Airlines, they embrace the culture, etiquette, and strict rules of the world above the clouds. The job takes them to faraway destinations and presents them with opportunities they could have only dared dream about.
As the two women build a deep friendship, they see each other through both love and danger while discovering what is truly important. They will also be forced to confront secrets that could change their lives all over again.
About the Author
We had the opportunity to interview Camille Di Maio back in January of 2022, and she told us that she was working on a draft of ComeFly With Me. You can listen to our full interview with Camille here. She talks about the process of working on Come Fly With Me beginning around the 30-minute mark.
1969, Seattle, California, Denver, New Orleans, Atlanta, and New York
Book Summary
Eleanor Bell is a widow who has dedicated her whole life to her family at the expense of pursuing her own dreams of becoming a singer. On the eve of her 69th birthday, she is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Eager to fulfill her dreams before it’s too late, she decides to set out on a bucket list tour of summer music festivals.
Much to the dismay of her adult daughter, Leanne, Eleanor forgets (maybe on purpose) to tell anyone where she’s going. Desperate to find her mom, Leanne enlists the help of her somewhat-distant teen daughter, Nora.
Nora is heading off to Yale in the fall, where she’ll be one of the school’s first female undergrads. The last thing she wants to do is spend her summer on the road with her mom. But then she hears something on the radio that changes her mind… her grandmother’s voice.
Nora and Leanne embark on a road trip in a Lincoln Continental that has them crisscrossing the map from Atlanta to California, Denver, and Seattle, then back to New York and New Orleans. They always seem to be one step behind Eleanor, who by this point has been dubbed the Dame of Rock ‘n’ Roll by the one and only Johnny Carson.
Related 1960s Recommendations
Kissing the Sky by Lisa Patton is another 2026 release with characters heading to a music festival, but this time they’re college-age friends heading to Woodstock. If you were a teen or 20-something in the 60s, this would be a fun pick!
The author of Lost in the Summer of ’69 also has a great 2025 release, Confessions of a Grammar Queen, set in 1960s New York. It’s a great pick if you want to read about what it was like for an aspiring female editor trying to make it in the male-dominated publishing industry.
Emily is an editorial assistant for Chatelaine magazine in Canada, where she is surrounded by the best female reporters in the country. They aren’t afraid to tackle tough topics, so when she sees a letter from an inmate at the notorious Mercer Women’s Prison, she thinks it could be just what she needs to launch her career as a journalist. She bravely goes undercover in the prison to investigate the prisoners’ claims, but then finds out it’s easier to get in than out.
In 1996, Rachel is the detective assigned to unravel the mystery of unidentified female remains discovered in a small Ontario cemetery. But it’s hard to keep hiding her family trauma when she discovers a link to the shuttered Mercer Women’s Prison.
About the Book and Author
This novel is based on true events at the Mercer Reformatory for Women, Canada’s first all-female prison, which operated in Toronto, Ontario from 1880 to 1969.
This is the third book by author Heather Marshall, and the early reviews are coming in just as high as her first two books, Looking for Jane and The Secret History of Audrey James.
Frances “Frankie” McGrath is a 21-year-old nursing student who has been raised by her conservative parents to always do “the right thing.” But when her brother ships out for Vietnam in 1965, she begins to change her views of right and wrong. Frankie impulsively joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows her brother to Vietnam. As she tends to the green and inexperienced young men who have been sent to fight the war, she is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction. Returning home to a changed America doesn’t prove to be any easier.
While The Women is the story of Frankie going to war, it also shines a light on the story of all women who risk everything to help others. The publisher describes this book as “a novel of searing insight and lyrical beauty” that is “profoundly emotional” and “richly drawn.”
Why You’ll Love This Book
There are so many books shedding light on the stories of women during WWI and WWII, but ever since we launched the Decades Reading Challenge back in 2020, we’ve been lamenting the lack of fiction about women’s roles in Vietnam. We weren’t disappointed in how much we learned about the difficult role of nursing during the war, and the long-lasting effects of the job.
Freda Gilroy arrived at Nashville’s Fisk University in 1959, eager to begin to uphold the tradition of Black Excellence instilled in her by her family back in Chicago. But she soon discovers a level of racism that she never knew in her hometown. A chance encounter with a young man draws her into the growing Civil Rights Movement, and over the next four years, she finds herself torn between two worlds and forced to decide how much she’s willing to sacrifice in the fight for justice and equality.
Three decades later, in 1992, Freda’s daughter, Tulip, is a PR professional in Chicago on track for a big promotion. But the recent ruling in the Rodney King trial is weighing heavily on her, and she feels called to action. As she seeks to uplift her community, she makes an irreversible professional misstep. Can she find the courage to step off the safe path and follow her heart the way her mother did years ago?
Jim Crow laws ruled Mississippi in the summer of 1964, and three innocent men had just been brutally murdered for trying to help Black Mississippians secure the right to vote. Twenty-two-year-old Violet has also just been the victim of a heinous attack and killed the man responsible. But she knows she’ll be blamed, so she runs from Jackson.
Violet’s sister, Marigold, works for the Mississippi Summer Project, which advocates for Black voting rights. Marigold hoped to attend law school, but a pregnancy changed her plans. She now heads North, hoping to raise her baby outside of segregated Mississippi.
While the sisters leave Jackson for their own reasons, they don’t realize that one man is pursuing them both for his own dark secrets.
Another 1960s Thriller
For another highly rated thriller set in the 1960s, pick up A Calamity of Souls by David Baldacci.
When Lily was young, her mother was killed. Years later, her life has been shaped by blurry memories of that horrible afternoon. After her Black “stand-in mother,” Rosaleen, gets into an altercation with well-known racists in town, Lily decides they should hit the road. The two escape to Tiburon, South Carolina, where an eccentric trio of Black beekeeping sisters takes them in.
Lily is introduced to the world of bees and honey, the Black Madonna, and the town that holds the secret to her mother’s past.
Margaret, Viv, and Bitsy appear to have it all by the standards of the early 1960s, but “all” doesn’t feel like enough to them. They live in a brand-new “planned community” in Northern Virginia and feel guilty and confused that they aren’t satisfied with their supposedly idyllic housewife lives.
Things begin to change when the three women form a book club with their artsy new neighbor from Manhattan, Charlotte. Together they read Betty Friedan’s controversial new book, The Feminine Mystique. For the first time, each of these women realizes that they are not alone in their dissatisfaction or their longings.
Their lives are forever altered. The book may be the start of it all, but it’s their bond of sisterhood that helps them find the courage they each need to navigate the rapidly changing world and see themselves in a new light.
Why We Think You’ll Love It
Angela picked up this book as a crossover read for our Books About Book Clubs prompt in the 2025 Book Lover’s Reading Challenge and the 1960s prompt in the Decades Challenge. This is one of her favorite time periods to read about, so she knew she’d enjoy the book from the outset, but it exceeded her already high expectations.
Sometimes in a book that follows four characters, we’re left feeling like none of them are as well-developed as we’d like, but here Marie Bostwick has created four fully-realized, unique characters. Each of the women has her own struggles and dreams, and the development of their storylines, individually and together as neighbors and friends, feels realistic and relatable.
As a woman born two decades after these fictional women formed their book club and transformed their lives, this novel gave Angela an even greater appreciation of the shoulders she stood on as she pursued her graduate-level education and career without the same limitations that prior generations experienced.
This coming-of-age story is about three 18-year-olds growing up in three different time periods.
William was 18 in 1967 when he went to Vietnam as a Marine. Vincent is 18 in 1979 when he meets William, working on a construction crew, and hears William’s stories of his wartime experience.
The third young man is Vincent’s son, Beau, who has had an easier life than the first two men. He was 18 in 2015 when Vincent received William’s old Vietnam journal in the mail as a thank you for listening to his stories years ago. It was written while William was a Marine and facing things that no one, much less a teenager, should have to encounter.
The three stories are woven together in a beautiful way that many are calling a must-read for everyone, despite the grim nature of William’s combat experiences.
About the Time Setting
Although this book is set in three time periods, the story is ultimately a historical fiction of Vietnam, making it a great pick for a book about the 1960s. Make sure you don’t miss the author’s note at the end of the book to learn more about Dugoni’s connection to the story.
Living in a beautiful home with a white picket fence in North Carolina, teenager Lorraine seems to have the perfect life. She has a wonderful boyfriend, but she has big ambitions and dreams of more for her life.
When Lorraine ends up pregnant, her family sends her away to a maternity home in order to shield themselves from the “shame.” But what is supposed to be a secluded safe haven is instead a house of dark secrets and suffocating rules.
As Lorraine begins to piece together a new vision for her future, she has to decide if she can fight against those who plan to take her child away or whether to bend to the rules of society.
Newlywed Ruth is a law school graduate with an independent streak stronger than most young women in her affluent neighborhood. However, she still wants to impress her mother-in-law, who has signed Ruth up for etiquette lessons with Lillian Diamond.
Fellow etiquette classmate Carrie is quiet but has a dark secret. When witty Ruth befriends Carrie, they form an unbreakable bond. Ruth pushes Lillian and all of her Diamond Girls to question the status quo and stretch beyond their comfort zones as they unite to protect one of their own.
About the Author
This book is by the same author as The Last Bathing Beauty, a highly rated book from our 1950s list.
Eddie is a pro baseball player having the worst season of his life. He can’t hit, his new teammates seem to hate him, and he’s homesick. He’s definitely not in the mood to give a series of interviews to a reporter like the team owner just demanded. But, since he’s already on thin ice, he reluctantly agrees.
Mark is a writer for the arts section who has had his own rough year. He just wants to be left alone to mourn the loss of a partner he can’t be public about. He has no interest in his new assignment – writing a season-long series about New York’s obnoxious new shortstop.
As the lonely men cross paths, they also feel surprisingly pulled toward each other. But Mark has vowed never to be in a secret relationship again, and Eddie can’t be out in the world of 1960s baseball.
This might just be the perfect historical fiction beach read for the summer – a family drama that brings the 60s to life in vivid, nostalgic detail.
Each year, the Levin family’s children look forward to spending their summer in Nantucket with their grandmother. But in the summer of ’69, thirteen-year-old Jessie is the only sibling who can make the trip. One of her older sisters is pregnant with twins, the other is caught up in the civil rights movement, and her older brother has recently been deployed to the war in Vietnam.
The summer proves to be an eventful one: Vietnam, Woodstock, the moon landing, the Chappaquiddick affair, Jessie struggling with her first heartbreak, and her grandmother with a few secrets of her own.
Novellas in This Series
If you enjoy Hilderbrand’s Summer of ’69, then you’ll also want to grab the novella-length sequels, Summer of ’79, which is available on Kindle or as an Audible audiobook. Another short story follow-up, Summer of ’89, is available in the recently published story collection Endless Summer.
The summer of 1961 started full of hope and innocence in New Bremen, Minnesota. Americans had a new young president, the Twins baseball team playing their debut season, root beers at the soda counter, and comic books on the magazine racks in the barbershop. But the summer soon turned grim, with multiple deaths. Was it an accident, natural causes, suicide, or murder?
When tragedy strikes, 13-year-old Frank Drum is thrust into adulthood overnight. The novel is part mystery and part coming-of-age story, told by Frank himself as a 40-year-old adult looking back on that fateful summer.
Context Note
Our readers say that this book deals with spirituality without being religious.
Women had fewer options in 1960s America. They couldn’t have their own bank accounts, credit cards, or leases, and divorce was both difficult and scandalous. Good friendships helped, and in 1965 Ohio, a weekly canasta game doubled as friendship therapy for a group of women.
Lily is a doctor’s wife, and when she learns that she’s pregnant with her second child, her friend Becca suggests that she take in one of the pregnant teens from the local home for unwed mothers. In this arrangement, the teen, Betsy, will live with Lily’s family for six months and help with babysitting and housekeeping until she has her own baby. At that point, she’ll never be allowed to contact the family again. But things soon get complicated.
Consider This Before Reading
This book includes themes of both abortion and domestic violence.
English teacher Jake Epping is recruited by his friend Al, the local diner owner, to help with the most unlikely of requests. Al discovered a portal in the diner’s storeroom that transports him back in time to the era of Ike and Elvis. He becomes obsessed with using the portal to go back in time and stop the assassination of John F. Kennedy. But when he realizes he won’t be able to complete the mission, he enlists Jake for the job. Jake reluctantly agrees to go back to 1958 and live the early years of the 1960s in the small town of Jodie, Texas, while devising a plan to stop JFK from dying on 11/22/63.
A Note About the Genre
This book is NOT what you’d expect from Stephen King. Instead of horror, you’ll find suspenseful historical fiction crossed with science fiction (and even a twist of romance) that addresses the most compelling aspect of time travel. How do actions taken in the past affect the same future you started in?
Additional Titles Covering the Kennedy Assassination
If you’re interested in historical fiction about this topic, consider The Measure of Silence by Elizabeth Langston about a teenage photographer who is at Dealey Plaza that fateful day, orNovember Roadby Lou Berney, which is part crime thriller and part love story.
Elizabeth Zott is a quirky, brilliant female chemist working on an all-male team at the Hastings Research Institute. But her scientific qualifications don’t stop the “good old boys” from being frustrated that she won’t get coffee or make copies for them. When Elizabeth meets Calvin Evans, another scientist at the Institute, another type of chemistry results.
Fast forward a few years. It’s 1961, and Elizabeth is a 30-year-old single mother, and her career has been detoured. Instead of working for Hastings, she’s now (somewhat reluctantly) the star of a much-loved cooking show called Supper at Six. Her cooking methods are unusual (“combine one tablespoon of acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”). As her popularity grows, it turns out she’s not just teaching women to cook, she’s also daring them to change the status quo.
What to Expect in This Novel
This novel is funny, but not in a laugh-out-loud sort of way – more in a way where you sometimes have to laugh so you don’t cry. The descriptions of the misogyny that Elizabeth faces (and specifically some of the language that is directed at her) offend some readers, but it’s an accurate representation of what she and so many women faced in the 1950s and 1960s.
By no means is our struggle for equality over, but this book gave us so much respect for the women who paved the way.
In the summer of 1964, Ibby’s father died unexpectedly, and her mother dropped Ibby off with her eccentric grandmother, Fannie. With Fannie periodically committed to the local asylum, Fannie’s Black cook, Queenie, and her smart-mouthed daughter, Dollbaby, keep an eye on Ibby and educate her on the ways of the South.
Fannie’s family history is marked by tragedy, hidden in the closed rooms of her ornate mansion. When Ibby arrives, it may be time to unlock the mysteries. Along the way, Queenie and Dollbaby’s caring and wisdom show Ibby that family can be found in unexpected places.
Reader Thoughts on This Book
Some reviewers say this 2014 Goodreads Choice Nominee for Best Historical Fiction reads like a YA coming-of-age novel.
Skeeter has returned home from college to her family’s cotton plantation, where, despite trying to act like a proper Southern lady, she seems to disappoint her mother constantly.
Her true ambition, however, is to be a writer. The only job she’s able to find is one she is completely unqualified for, writing a housekeeping advice column for the local paper. Having virtually no experience of her own with housekeeping, Skeeter turns to her friend’s maid, the very poised Aibileen, for help.
As she gets to know Aibileen and Aibileen’s friend, the very sassy Minny, more intimately, Skeeter is inspired to help tell their stories, and she pitches the idea to write the narratives of 12 Black maids – a very risky project for all of them.
Our Thoughts on This Book
This is one of Angela’s favorite books of all time! It’s full of characters that are easy to love (and others not so much), and by the end, you’ll be so invested in their stories that you won’t want the book to end!
The good news is that, when you do reach the final page, you can watch the movie to enjoy these women all over again.
In August of 1961, barbed wire was placed across Berlin in the middle of the night. Families were torn apart against their wishes by the new 30-mile wall. This historical fiction imagines the lives of twin sisters separated on that fateful night.
Karin is in East Berlin when the wall goes up, separating her from her twin, Jutta. They live parallel lives for years, with Karin surviving the brutal East German regime only with Otto’s help. One day, Jutta finds a hidden way to reach Karin, but the Stasi are watching. Should Jutta flee back home with her sister or follow her heart?
Our Thoughts on This Book
As children of the 1980s, we always associated the Berlin Wall with the decade when it came down. It was eye-opening for us to read about the wall going up in the early 1960s and what it was like for the families separated all those years.
It’s the 1960s, and Elwood has been raised by his loving but strict grandmother. His hard work and focus on always doing the right thing are about to pay off.
Elwood is getting ready to enroll in the local Black college and has big dreams. Everything changes when an innocent mistake causes him to be sent to The Nickel Academy to be “reformed” for his so-called crimes.
While the 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Nickel Boys is fiction, it’s based on real “schools” and the unspeakable treatment of young Black men who were sent there during the 1960s. Elwood does his best to remain optimistic, but his positive attitude is challenged by his new friend Turner, who has experienced a different world growing up.
Thoughts on This Book
This book will make you feel every emotion. Through Colson Whitehead’s writing, you really get to know and feel for the characters and the situation they are thrown into. Regretfully, racial inequality in America is embarrassingly still a relevant topic today. This is not an easy book to read, but books like this are extremely important to add perspective to the ongoing pushes for equality.
Colson Whitehead is also the author of Harlem Shuffle, a novel of heists, shakedowns, and rip-offs set in Harlem in the 1960s.
This is the memoir of Jackie Kennedy’s personal Secret Service agent, Clint Hill, who was with her throughout her years as First Lady. In this intimate portrait, he recalls being by Jackie’s side for some of her happiest moments, as well as the darkest.
He traveled the world with her, shared in intimate family moments in and out of the White House, and was with her in Dallas on 11/22/63 when he jumped onto the back of the President’s car to shield Mrs. Kennedy in the moments after her husband’s assassination, a tragic day that he recounts moment by moment in this book.
About the Author
Clint Hill has written other memoirs about his time as a Secret Service agent, including the 2016 Five Presidents, in which he reflects on his seventeen years on the White House detail under Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford, shedding light on their personalities and giving a unique insider perspective on many historical events of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. His newest memoir, My Travels with Mrs. Kennedy, tells more stories about his years traveling the globe with the First Lady.
All of Clint Hill’s memoirs are vivid and insightful without feeling gossipy, and he provides an in-depth look at the politics of the day without feeling political.
Starla is only 9 years old when she makes a series of decisions that change her life overnight. It’s 1963, and she lives with her strict grandmother in Mississippi. Despite being grounded, Starla sneaks out to see the annual 4th of July parade. When she’s caught, she believes her grandmother’s threats of reform school and sneaks out again, this time with the intention of finding her mom all the way in Nashville.
Starla is offered a ride from a Black woman, Eula, traveling with a white baby, quite a controversial scene in the 1963 South. Their journey is full of adventures, sometimes dangerous, and long chats that help Starla redefine family and understand more about the world she lives in.
Thoughts on This Book
This book is described by many as The Secret Life of Bees meets The Help meets To Kill a Mockingbird.
If you are interested in reading more about this period of Southern history through the eyes of a child protagonist, consider adding Boy’s Life by Robert McCammon to your TBR list. Like Whistling Past the Graveyard, Boy’s Life is also set in the 1960s, but this time in Alabama. This novel similarly examines racial prejudice and segregation, but it also includes elements of fantasy and horror.
Heads Up: This book does include some domestic violence.
In this coming-of-age novel, thirteen-year-old Jack Elliot wants to find a way to keep his oldest brother, Pete, from being drafted and sent to Vietnam. He overhears the men at the local barbershop complaining that famous boys don’t go to war, so he decides the best way to protect his brother is to make him the biggest celebrity in their small town.
Jack and his cousin Frankie convince Jack’s brothers to hunt for a missing fighter jet that crashed in their neck of the woods a few winters back. If they find it, Pete will be a hero. But their summer plans become more complicated thanks to a beautiful girl, a greedy developer, and a wild motorcycle gang.
The Outsiders follows two weeks in the life of 14-year-old Ponyboy Curtis as he struggles with right and wrong. His world is made up of just two groups – the “socs,” a violent gang of rich kids who have money and can get away with anything, and the greasers, like Ponyboy, who live on the outside and need to watch their backs. Ponyboy is a proud greaser until the night that his friend makes a terrible decision, and he begins to question everything.
About This Book & Musical Adaptation
This coming-of-age novel is one of the most popular teenage books from the ’60s. It’s now regarded as not only an influential piece of literature in the 1960s, but also as one of the novels that laid the groundwork for the YA genre.
There is also a new Broadway musical version of The Outsiders, which won the Tony Award for Best Musical. Melissa saw the touring debut in Tulsa, and it blew her away. We highly recommend it, unless you’re sensitive to flashing lights!
Another 1960s Classic
For a totally different classic written in the 1960s, consider Valley of the Dolls, about the prevalence of uppers and downers and three women’s dependence on them as they form a friendship and try to make it in the entertainment industry.
Fifty-something Imogen Fortier is a magazine columnist living on Camano Island outside of Seattle. When she receives a fan letter containing a gift of saffron from 27-year-old Joan Bergstrom in LA, she writes back. Thus begins an unlikely friendship between these two women.
As the years pass, their letters to one another help them through the ups and downs of the world – the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of President Kennedy, as well as the unexpected twists and turns in their own lives. From world events to romantic relationships, through their letters, they discover that food and a good life can’t be separated. Can anything shake the trust they’ve built over their years of correspondence?
This book is fully written in epistolary style, so you’ll be reading the letters back and forth between the women. The author kept the book on the shorter side, hoping it could be enjoyed in one sitting.
Our Thoughts on This Book
If you are looking for an easy read that will be a “brief respite from our chaotic world,” this epistolary novel of food and friendship might be your perfect 1960s read.
Melissa read this book on a family vacation when she was looking for something short and light. Love & Saffron exceeded her expectations! It was a lovely story of friendship and the power of forming a connection through writing before ever meeting. As Melissa & Angela (the Book Girls) met through online communication, it was fun to be reminded that before computers, pen pals could become your dearest friends.
Don’t miss the author’s note at the end of the book, which shares details about the real-life women who inspired the story.
In 2010, architect Kayla Carter’s husband died tragically while working on the construction of the family’s dream home in the quiet town of Round Hill, North Carolina. Kayla tries to stay strong for her young daughter, but she knows that the new house will always hold upsetting memories. Then, a mysterious older woman, who seems to know too much about the family, warns Kayla not to move into the trophy home in Shadow Ridge Estates. The property is rumored to be haunted, but the true history of the land may hide even darker secrets.
In the 1965 timeline, the author takes us back to Round Hill during a very turbulent time in American history. College student Ellie Hockley was raised to be a proper Southern lady, but she envisions a different future than the one that’s expected of her. She plans to spend her summer break helping to register Black voters. As she aids the fight for civil rights, she’ll discover the frightening true nature of her neighbor’s prejudices.
When these two women’s stories ultimately come together, the truth will finally be revealed.
What to Expect in This Book
This book weaves together history, suspense, and social justice. Reviewers call the book enthralling, but it will also likely make you feel anger and heartache because Chamberlain does not shy away from digging deep into tough topics.
When Alice Weiss leaves her home in Iowa to chase her dreams in NYC, she is lucky to land the job of a lifetime at Cosmopolitan magazine, which is under the new leadership of its first female editor, Helen Gurley Brown.
Not everyone is happy to see Helen at the helm of the magazine, with some editors and writers resigning and others cooking up a scheme to sabotage their new boss. Alice, on the other hand, remains loyal and is determined to help her new boss succeed as she shocks America by daring to talk to women about all things off-limits.
Our Thoughts on This Book
We both loved stepping right into 1965 Manhattan as Alice adjusted from her Midwestern roots and learned how magazines are run. This novel is often described as Mad Men meets The Devil Wears Prada, but it’s a huge bonus that the book was based on the real Cosmopolitan magazine and its first female editor, Helen Gurley Brown.
This book tells the fascinating, true story of the wives behind the men of the 1960s space program. NASA viewed the families of their astronauts as their business, selecting only men with seemingly perfect family lives, and giving the wives strict orders to create homes that wouldn’t produce any undue stress or “mental chores” for the men.
The women were rocketed to celebrity by their husbands’ selection as the original Mercury 7 astronauts. Under an exclusive LIFE magazine deal, reporters and photographers were embedded in the wives’ lives. They followed the wives everywhere, even in the tense moments as they awaited word of their husbands’ fate on each mission. Only able to confide in one another, the “astrowives” formed a tight-knit community in Houston.
Thoughts on This Book
The Astronaut Wives Club receives mixed reviews, with most complaints seeming to stem from the fact that it’s written more like a work of feature journalism. Angela found it fascinating, and our readers also tend to enjoy it more than the Goodreads rating reflects. If you enjoy the style of historical non-fiction books like Hidden Figures, we think you’ll appreciate this book, too!
You are welcome to choose any book that you’d like to read for the challenge, but we hope that this list of books has given you a good starting point.
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We compiled this list of major events of the time period to provide some historical context for your reading. We hope you enjoy learning a bit more about this period in history.
The US deployed American military advisors to Vietnam in 1960. After many years of conflict, the US officially went to war in Vietnam when it sent combat troops to defend the American airbase at Da Nang in 1965. Opposition grew in the US, and anti-Vietnam sentiment became more prevalent throughout the decade.
In 1960, John F. Kennedy became the youngest person elected President of the United States; three years later, JFK was assassinated on November 22, 1963, while riding in a motorcade through Dallas, Texas, with his wife Jackie sitting by his side.
The development of “the Pill” in 1960 brought the topic of contraception “out of the bedroom and into the living room” as it became a common theme in magazine articles and books.
NASA launched its first astronaut into space for a suborbital flight on May 5, 1961, just weeks after the Soviet Union launched the first human into orbit. In the following year, NASA sent two more of its original Mercury 7 astronauts into space.
In the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution, at the height of the Cold War, a US-backed operation known as the Bay of Pigs invasion was unsuccessful in its attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro in 1961.
Beginning on August 13, 1961, the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) began constructing the Berlin Wall, which divided Germany – cutting off West Berlin from East Berlin – until 1989.
The world was on the brink of another World War in 1962 as the Cuban Missile Crisis escalated, and both the US and USSR came close to launching nuclear attacks.
The Beatles released their first single – “Love Me Do” – in the UK in 1962. When the Beatles first visited America two years later, in 1964, Beatlemania swept the nation and launched a music phenomenon known as “The British Invasion” that also included popular British bands such as The Rolling Stones, The Who, and Herman’s Hermits.
In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech during the Civil Rights March on Washington; the renowned civil rights activist was later assassinated in 1968.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 – which outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, or national origin – was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The following year, LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act into law, ending discrimination at the polls.
The first Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health declares smoking “hazardous to your health.” This contradicts years of tobacco industry advertisements regarding the benefits of smoking.
1967 is dubbed the “Summer of Love” when the “hippie movement” was in full swing in and around San Francisco, where thousands of young people flocked to Haight-Ashbury.
Senator Robert Kennedy, brother of JFK, was assassinated days after winning the California Presidential primary; Richard Nixon went on to win the US presidential election in 1968.
In 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men on the Moon during NASA’s Apollo 11 mission.
The three-day Woodstock music festival in 1969 featured acts such as The Who, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin.
In one of the most baffling and horrifying criminal cases of the century, followers of cult leader Charles Manson murdered seven people in 1969.
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2 Comments
The “Where the Crawdads Sing” has snatch another fan! I really enjoyed the book. Kya was a wonderful and colorful character. It was hard to put down. Thanks for turning me on to this book. Can’t wait to read the others you have suggested.
I’m so glad you enjoyed it Stephanie! I just finished reading The Great Alone and if you haven’t read it, we both highly recommend it.
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The “Where the Crawdads Sing” has snatch another fan! I really enjoyed the book. Kya was a wonderful and colorful character. It was hard to put down. Thanks for turning me on to this book. Can’t wait to read the others you have suggested.
I’m so glad you enjoyed it Stephanie! I just finished reading The Great Alone and if you haven’t read it, we both highly recommend it.