Summer of '69

March 1, 2019
The prolific Strasser (Price of Duty, 2018, etc.) offers a semiautobiographical account of a transformative Long Island summer in 1969.High school grad Lucas Baker is working for his dad's bulk-mail facility for the summer, and it's not exactly stimulating, but he has the company of his good friends Arno and Milton and plenty of acid and grass at the ready. But his parents seem headed for divorce, and his girlfriend is off at camp, sending letters hinting at a possible breakup. He's also been rejected by the only college he had much hope of getting into, closing off his best shot at avoiding the draft. There are a few bright spots: the lovely Tinsley and the upcoming Woodstock music festival, which promises to be epic. Before he gets to Woodstock, he'll have to wrestle with his views on the war and the draft and escape a few hairy situations with his friends, including a memorable tussle with a biker gang. Strasser perfectly captures the golden haze of youth and life on the cusp of adulthood. Readers fascinated with this time period will find much to enjoy. All main characters are white, but Lucas' African-American conscientious objector counselor, Charles, offers his perspective on the war and the treatment of African-American soldiers.Vietnam, Woodstock, road trips, and acid trips: a sweetly bittersweet, surprising, even melancholy bildungsroman set against a world in flux. Groovy, man. (author's note) (Fiction. 14- adult)

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July 1, 2019
Recent high school graduate Lucas doesn't think beyond his next acid trip or the upcoming Woodstock festival. The narrative is related in a first-person voice that cleverly shifts to the third person to portray Lucas's LSD trips as out-of-body experiences. Letters from his motivated girlfriend and a friend serving in Vietnam, newspaper headlines, and draft board notices provide ballast to Lucas's self-centered perspective; eventually, he steps outside of his own experience to see Vietnam as a "working-class war."

(Copyright 2019 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

September 1, 2019
You would figure that in 1969 a recent high school graduate driving a VW microbus dubbed Odysseus would be on a journey. And Lucas Baker is, but his odyssey is primarily a search for self. His family is dysfunctional; his girlfriend, Robin, has a clear direction to her life that may not include him; and he himself has no plans and doesn't think beyond his next acid trip or the upcoming Woodstock festival. In this historic year, men are walking on the moon and in the jungles of Vietnam. Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, and The Who are gods to Lucas and his friends, and being at Woodstock is like landing on the island of the lotus eaters, a drugged-out reprieve from the problems of their lives. The narrative is related in a first-person voice that cleverly shifts to the third person to portray Lucas's LSD trips as out-of-body experiences. Letters from Robin and a friend serving in Vietnam, newspaper headlines, and notices from the draft board provide ballast to Lucas's self-centered perspective, as do his meetings with Charles, a Black draft counselor who gets Lucas to step outside of his own experience and see Vietnam as a working-class war that rich white kids evade by going to college while Black and blue-collar white kids get killed. An author's note discusses the personal roots of Strasser's tale. dean Schneider

(Copyright 2019 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)