Intergenerational Novels: Books that Connect Generations

Book Summary

When Lydia takes a part-time job running the local senior center three afternoons a week, she has no idea what she’s getting herself into. In addition to a more rambunctious group of seniors, than she expected, the council is trying to sell the building that houses both the senior center and a daycare center.

Daphne has been reclusive for decades, hiding from a mysterious past that may still be trying to catch up to her. But, her 70th birthday prompts reflection on her life. She decides that MAYBE it wouldn’t be terrible to find a friend…or even a boyfriend.

What she finds at the senior center is not what she expects. Despite her initial reservations, an unlikely chain of new relationships, including a teenage father, a dog, and some grumpy old men, changes her life in every way.

Book Summary

Set on beautiful Lake Superior, this book explores a family’s history and deep connection to a lighthouse. Elizabeth lives in a senior home and has a sharp mind, but has lost her sight. She fills the void with music and memories, which spring to life when her late father’s journals are found in the ruins of an old shipwreck.

Morgan is a troubled teen assigned to community service at Elizabeth’s home. With her help, Elizabeth reads through her father’s journal, with each entry taking Morgan and Elizabeth back in time 70 years. He was the lighthouse keeper on isolated Porphyry Island. As the unlikely duo reads, they realize their fates are connected to the remote island and each other in unexpected ways.

Book Summary

Thirty-two-year-old Henrietta once wanted to be a librarian, but now her work transcribing life stories for terminally ill patients is the perfect distraction from her own past. It typically allows her to separate fact from emotion, but when Henrietta meets 60-something Annie, who is both eccentric and terminally ill, she feels herself being drawn into Annie’s story.

When Annie reveals her sister’s mysterious drowning back in 1974, Henrietta begins methodically following the story’s loose ends. Annie, on the other hand, has long been afraid to look too closely into her murky memories of that terrible night. The push and pull between these two women will unearth a surprising emotional connection between them before it’s too late.

Book Summary

Lenni is only 17 years old, but she has a terminal illness. Despite the devastating impacts of her disease and the drugs she has to take to manage it, Lenni is determined to live every moment that she can, even if she can’t leave the hospital. 

Escaping to the hospital’s crafts room, Lenni enrolls in an art class where she gets to know Margot, an 83-year-old fellow rebel with heart problems. As their unexpected friendship grows, the pair realize that between the two of them, they’ve lived an entire century of life. To celebrate this milestone, they decide to paint their life stories – joy, kindness, loss, and love.

Book Summary

Raymond is a shy Black teen who feels like he doesn’t fit in anywhere – not with his complicated family and not at school. Mildred is a blind 92-year-old Holocaust survivor living alone since her caretaker disappeared. When Raymond meets Mildred in his apartment building, she introduces herself with the question: “Have you seen Luis Velez?”

Raymond begins to help Mildred with her weekly errands to the banks and the grocery store, and also hopes to help her track down Luis. In a short time, they’ve formed an unlikely friendship. Raymond demonstrates that for every terrible act, there’s a mirror image of kindness. And Mildred helps Raymond see that even when life is difficult, there is always hope.

Book Summary

In this charming debut novel, seventy-year-old Widower Tova works at the Sowell Bay Aquarium to occupy her mind and time. She takes pride in cleaning perfectly every night, even though she doesn’t need the money. She loves all the aquarium life but forms a special bond with the intelligent (and curmudgeonly) octopus named Marcellus.

He’s just as surprised to feel friendly toward this human who visits him nightly. Soon, he connects the sadness he sees in her with something he saw in the ocean long ago. Can he help her solve the mystery of her son’s disappearance 30 years ago?

The story is told from three alternating viewpoints – those of Tova and Marcellus, as well as Cameron. Cameron is an aimless 30-year-old who was abandoned by his mother when he was just a child. His aunt did her best to raise him, but his life has been a series of dead-end jobs. He travels to Sowell Bay in search of answers that may give his life direction. He winds up taking a temporary position at the aquarium.

Book Summary

West With Giraffes is a charming tale of adventure that takes you on the ride of a lifetime from the East Coast of the US to the West, alongside a rowdy 17-year-old, a grumpy older man, and two giraffes. The year is 1938, and no American zoo has successfully housed giraffes before. The female zoo director of the San Diego Zoo believes she can do it. The giraffes have just survived a hurricane en route to the East Coast, and Riley Jones, the curmudgeonly head zookeeper, is responsible for safely transporting the giraffes from New York City to San Diego.

America is still in the throes of the Great Depression, and the Dust Bowl conditions continue to ravage the drought-stricken Southern Plains states. Jones begrudgingly teams up with a starving teenager named Woody to help him make the coast-to-coast journey. The adventures along the way include run-ins with circus con artists, being tailed by a female photographer looking for a big scoop, an emotional visit to Woody’s hometown, and so much more.

Book Summary

After losing her husband in WWII and her daughter to illness, Iris walled herself off from the world. She’s spent many decades hiding behind the tall fence around her home. In place of human connection, Iris has surrounded herself with a family of flowers. Propagating her daylilies and roses and tending to a garden that helps her keep memories of those she loved alive.

In the early 2000s, Abby is a young mother whose husband has recently returned from military service in Iraq. When Abby’s family rents a cottage along Lake Michigan, next door to Iris’ property, the older woman can’t help but view the young family as a window to the life she once had.

As Iris and Abby are drawn together by their shared love of flowers, the friendship that blossoms between them is a testament to the healing power of both gardening and human connection.

Book Summary

Do you dream of seeing the Venetian canals, the Amalfi Coast, or wandering through gorgeous Tuscan villages? This novel will transport you to all three dramatically different scenic Italian locations in vivid detail.

Two hundred years ago, Filomena Fontana cursed her sister. Ever since then, every 2nd born sister in the Fontana family has been unable to find love.

Some of the women believe in the curse, and others are skeptical, but when eighty-year-old Aunt Poppy invites two of the twenty-something second-born sisters to return to Italy with her, promising to have a plan to break the curse, they can’t pass up the chance. The trio of women travel throughout Italy, learning about their family history and uncovering secrets.

Book Summary

Alberto knows he is an old man now, but he doesn’t know how old. In fact, he doesn’t even know his birthday. He arrived at an orphanage during the Spanish civil war and remembers nothing about his childhood before that time. 

His 7-year-old Grandson Tino is surprised to learn that his grandfather has never had a birthday party, received presents, or blown out candles on a cake. But he wants this to change, so Alberto and Tino set out on an adventure to find Alberto’s birthday. 

The hunt for his past takes them into the heart of Spain, transporting you back to the Spanish civil war as they work through details from Alberto’s difficult childhood.

Book Summary

During the 80 years leading up to the Great Depression, so-called Orphan Trains transported children from cities on the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest. The fates of the children on board – whether they would end up with loving families or end up with a childhood of hard labor – were determined by pure luck.

Vivian – now 91 – was one of those children, and the memories of her childhood are now tucked inside trunks in her attic. Eighteen-year-old Molly is aging out of the foster care system and is assigned community service helping the elderly Vivian clean out her home. She will soon learn that the two have much more in common than she ever expected.

Book Summary

Thirty-four-year-old Harry has always loved trees, but he spends his days behind a computer as an analyst in a treeless US Forest Service office. After his wife dies suddenly and tragically, Harry can’t seem to move forward. One day, he decides to follow his wife’s advice – he quits his job and escapes to the remote woods of northeastern Pennsylvania to be with the trees.

There, he meets Oriana, a 9-year-old girl who has suffered a significant loss of her own. She spends most of her time in the forest with her book in the treehouse her father bought for her. They bond over their love of the forest and the trees.

The octogenarian town librarian gives Oriana a strange, handwritten book called The Grum’s Ledger. With this book as their guide, Oriana helps Harry believe in the magic, if only he’s willing to open his eyes and see it.

Book Summary

Twenty-nine-year-old Libby is in her own world as she arrives in London, broken-hearted and newly unemployed. The first person she meets is an elderly man named Frank on a bus. Frank explains that he met a beautiful girl on bus 88 in 1962, and they made plans to visit the National Gallery together. But then Frank lost the ticket with her phone number. So, every day for 60 years, he’s ridden the same bus, hoping to run into her again.

Libby can’t just walk away from such a romantic and heartbreaking story. She enlists the help of an unlikely companion and creates posters advertising their search for the mystery girl. As they try to find her, Frank’s dementia is progressing quickly, teaching Libby important lessons about embracing happiness before it’s too late.

Book Summary

When Robin ran away to London at the age of 16, she never intended to return home to her cantankerous mother, Faye. But when now 78-year-old Faye has a fall, Robin feels compelled to help her. They say that distance makes the heart grow fonder, but this is not true among these women.

When Robin was young, her father used to take her on a treasure hunt each Sunday. While carrying for her mother, Robin finds one last unopened scroll from her father. When Amber, Robin’s daughter, arrives to meet her grandmother for the first time, Amber is determined that they must solve this final treasure hunt riddle. And doing so might just change everything for these three women.

Book Summary

Teenager Tom uses the library to escape from an unhappy present and what feels like it will be an unhappy future stuck working at the dog food factory. Seventy-two-year-old Pensioner Maggie finds him suspicious.

She’s been alone for ten years now and tells herself she is happy. When she has to be rescued by Tom, an unlikely friendship begins. As Maggie teaches Tom to stand up for himself, Tom helps Maggie realize that her future doesn’t have to be defined by her past.

Together, they’re an unstoppable force when they set out to prove that the local library is about so much more than books.

Book Summary

Kathleen is living independently at 80 years old, and she’s rather impressed with the way she handled a recent scary situation with an intruder. However, her daughter Liza thinks this incident is a prime example of why Kathleen should move to a senior home.

Not only does Kathleen not want to move, she’s also ready for a new adventure traveling down Route 66 in search of an old friend. Liza’s already stressed and has no time to drive across the country with her mom. So, Kathleen publishes an ad for a driver and companion to travel with her across America.

When 25-year-old Martha sees the ad, she thinks it could solve all her problems. How much trouble could an 80-year-old be?

Book Summary

To most of the world, George and Barbara Bush were the President and First Lady of the United States, but to Today show host and avid reader Jenna Bush Hager, they were something even more important – Gampy and Ganny. In this heartfelt and touching memoir, Jenna paints an intimate portrait of all four of her grandparents – the Bushes, who lived in the national spotlight, and the Welches, who lived a much quieter life as a home builder and a homemaker in Midland, Texas.

Throughout this moving book, Jenna recalls her favorite memories of her grandparents and shares the lessons they taught her about respect, humility, kindness, living a life of passion, and appreciating the beauty in the smallest things.

Book Summary

When twenty-nine-year-old Londoner Leena Cotton is forced to take a two-month sabbatical from work after a disastrous presentation, she escapes to her grandmother’s house in a small village in Yorkshire, England. Her grandmother, Eileen, is about to turn 80 and hopes her next decade might include a second chance at love. Convinced that her grandmother will have better luck in the romance department if she heads to the big city, Leena convinces Eileen to swap her places and move into Leena’s London apartment.

This warm and charming novel is filled with vibrant descriptions of London and English village life as the grandmother and granddaughter duo aim to reset their lives after a difficult loss.

Book Summary

In 1976, Odessa, Texas, the next great oil boom was on the horizon. But then the town is rocked by a brutal crime against a fourteen-year-old girl in one of the oil fields. This novel explores the lasting effects of the crime on not only the girl but several of the town’s women, each with their own unique backstory and circumstances.

Book Summary

This is the story of a green notebook that brings six strangers together, leading to unexpected friendships and even love.

Julian is an eccentric artist in his 70s. He’s frustrated that more people aren’t more honest with each other. He shares his feelings in a notebook, then leaves it in a cafe. The owner, Monica, adds her thoughts and leaves the notebook across the street at a wine bar.

As former strangers find the notebook and share their authentic selves, they begin to learn that instead of being scary, being yourself brings happiness.

Book Summary

Years after a tragic accident, Masha still hasn’t returned to her spunky former self. She has only one companion – her dog Haizum.

Then, she meets Kitty and Sally Red Shoes. Kitty is a septuagenarian roller disco aficionado. Sally is a bag lady with an amazing voice. Their wisdom and insight aid Masha’s return to life and help to open her eyes to new possibilities. 

These unexpected relationships show the enormous power of friendship and the importance of being open to new friends.