While we let the sweet, ephemeral summer months transition into notes of fall, it seems fitting to reflect on this summer’s beach reads — as if college students still have the luxury of sprawling out and cracking open a book under the sun. Although I have Michelle Obama and Tara Westover to thank for enjoyable, yet cerebral memoirs and autobiographies, author Elin Hilderbrand’s Summer of ‘69 has all of the qualities that constitute a memorable summer read: lighthearted with the right amount of depth. Summer of ’69 is refreshing, not only because its pages turn easily and narration flows seamlessly, but it also adds a certain much-needed weightlessness to a very brainy New York Times bestseller list.
Summer of ‘69 prides itself on its progressive nature, following the summer story of the Levin family as their comfortable family dynamic falls privy to the tumultuous times of America in the late sixties. Although this was my first time reading Hilderbrand’s work, her wildly popular books have led the beach-read scene for years. Clearly, her spot on the “to read” lists of bookworms everywhere this summer proves Summer of ’69 is no different; in fact, she has sold 22 best-selling novels, their popularity stemming from the fact that most of her novels are more apolitical than not, which is what makes this book particularly eccentric. A review by the NY Journal of Books perhaps says it best: the American summer of ’69 was an emulation of “free love, Woodstock, and the harsh realities of the Vietnam War.” The novel couples a heavy historical context with a hippie lifestyle in the backdrop of blissful Nantucket, balancing the hectic political climate that influences the narrative.
For the most part, Summer of ’69 is told in the perspective of thirteen year-old Jessie Levin (“rhymes with heaven,” as she is always quick to say), who represents most of us when we were a fresh new adolescent: a victim of puberty, ever-curious, and a little bit awkward. Jessie, along with her particularly worrisome mother Kate, navigates the consequences of sending her eighteen-year-old brother, Tiger to war. A main crux of the narrative is the contrast between toes-in-the-sand Nantucket and deep-in-the-trenches of ‘Nam, which leaves the family divided and left to try to amend this void in their new harsh reality.
“Harsh” yes, but rest assured that no dark clouds hover over Summer of ’69, especially when the story is told by Jessie’s spunky older sisters, stubborn Blair and rebellious Kirby, who both epitomize the progressiveness of the younger demographic of the sixties. Kirby, a sophomore in college, is determined to change the political trajectory of the future in any way she can, which easily makes her an admirable character. She comes into many “man versus self” conflicts when she is given a hotel front-desk job at Martha’s Vineyard and must deal with work related stressors and other quintessential coming-of-age issues. Meanwhile, Blair is an ardent, independent newlywed, struggling to assert herself and her power against her husband Angus, who is an astrophysicist working for the Apollo 11 project. That leaves sensible, no-nonsense Exalta, Jessie, Kirby, and Blair’s grandmother, to spearhead the Levin-Foley and addsa hilarious tone to the narrative.
Although Hilderbrand is a notorious author and her books have been – and will continue to be – in the spotlight for decades, few know about her past and how that has influenced her work. While Hilderbrand spent many family summers on the beach, much like the characters whose stories she tells so vividly, she also had her fair share of lackluster summers spent inside, fighting mental illness after her father died in a tragic plane crash when she was sixteen. How do you continue a beloved family tradition when a key member isn’t there for the first time in forever to share it? Perhaps Summer of ’69 is a reflection of the author herself; after all, Tiger’s absence leaves such a mark on the Levin family dynamic that it could just be entirely plausible that Jessie’s feelings of loss and despair over her brother share the same wavelength of how Hilderbrand felt as a young adult coping with the loss of her father.
Needless to say, Summer of ’69 has its complexities – war, grief, sexism – that are sometimes hard to grapple, but it is the consistent underlying note of lighthearted carpe diem that makes it the perfect summer read. While this work of fiction certainly stood out against aforementioned works Becoming, Educated, and My Own Words, I would suggest that the independent young female characters of Summer of ’69 taught me just as much about social justice and why the best thing you can do right now is be politically informed. So thank you, Elin Hilderbrand, for not only being my ticket to Nantucket this summer, but for diversifying what populated the summer lists of 2019, and telling a story of young women changing the world in a simple yet compelling way that calls for others to join them. •
