SUMMER OF '69 by Elin Hilderbrand

Against the backdrop of Woodstock, the moon landing, civil rights, Vietnam, Chappaquiddick, and the feminist movement, the women in this novel are anything but feminist.  Blair is pregnant with twins and has sacrificed her own career at the insistence of her husband, who is a scientist working on the Apollo 11 mission.  When she suspects that he is cheating on her with a prostitute, she packs her bags for Nantucket, where her family has summered for decades.  Kirby, a college student, opts for a change of pace at Martha’s Vineyard, where she has a job at a hotel and falls for a black guy.  Jessie, half-sister of Kirby and Blair, is thirteen and has taken to shoplifting as an act of rebellion, I guess.  Kate is the mother of all three girls/women, but she has turned into a lush after her only son was drafted.  These women all have too much money and time on their hands, although they do grapple with real world problems.  However, it’s hard to take a book seriously when the chapter headings are all 1960s song titles.  The author goes to some length to contrive a match between the plot and the song title.  For example, in the “White Rabbit” chapter, Kate and Jessie dine at a restaurant called the Mad Hatter.  This was all just way too cutesy for me, and I felt that the author was trying to touch on a smattering of feminist issues, including physical and sexual abuse, without giving these women the gumption to stand up for themselves.  Their lives revolve around their men, who are tangential as far as their character development but instrumental in shaping the summer of ’69 for these women.