HerKentucky Whiskey Glass Rating: 🥃🥃🥃🥃🥃

Publisher’s synopsis: Four siblings experience the drama, intrigue, and upheaval of the '60s summer when everything changed in Elin Hilderbrand's #1 New York Times bestselling historical novel.
Welcome to the most tumultuous summer of the twentieth century. It's 1969, and for the Levin family, the times they are a-changing. Every year the children have looked forward to spending the summer at their grandmother's historic home in downtown Nantucket. But like so much else in America, nothing is the same: Blair, the oldest sister, is marooned in Boston, pregnant with twins and unable to travel. Middle sister Kirby, caught up in the thrilling vortex of civil rights protests and determined to be independent, takes a summer job on Martha's Vineyard. Only-son Tiger is an infantry soldier, recently deployed to Vietnam. And thirteen-year-old Jessie suddenly feels like an only child, marooned in the house with her out-of-touch grandmother and her worried mother, while each of them hides a troubling secret.
As the summer heats up, Ted Kennedy sinks a car in Chappaquiddick, man flies to the moon, and Jessie and her family experience their own dramatic upheavals along with the rest of the country. In her first historical novel, rich with the details of an era that shaped both a nation and an island thirty miles out to sea, Elin Hilderbrand once again earns her title as queen of the summer novel.

HerKentucky Review: The Levin family faces their own crises against the tumultuous backdrop of 1969. This is Ms. Hilderbrand’s most ambitious novel, and the only one set in a historical context. Boomers will love the convergence of events — Chappaquiddick, the moon landing — that accompanies the story. The rest of us will love the layers of family drama. I especially loved a passage that described a character’s summer packing list — Tretorns, striped shirts, Lilly Pulitzer dresses — that mimics my own over fifty years later.

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