Hello,

This week in First Impressions, our reviewers glance back in time with Lynda Rutledge's Mockingbird Summer, in which a friendship between two young girls crosses the racial divide of a 1960s Texas town.

In Editor's Choice, we view the same approximate period through the posthumous work of Diane Oliver, gathered together for the first time in Neighbors and Other Stories, a collection that brings a youthful point of view to today's perception of Black American life under segregation and desegregation.

Plus, find many more recommended reads in our 1960s and '70s category, see Lauren Grodstein's letter to readers about her reasons for writing her World War II novel We Must Not Think of Ourselves, and enter a giveaway of Brandi Wells' disturbingly humorous office drama The Cleaner.

This is the last summer of thirteen-year-old Corky Corcoran's childhood, and her family hires a Haitian housekeeper who brings her daughter, America, along with her. Corky is quick to befriend America and eager to share her favorite new "grown-up" novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.

Set on the eve of massive cultural shifts, Mockingbird Summer explores the impact of great books, the burden of potential, and the power of friendship with humor, poignancy, and exhilarating hope.

"I enjoyed this book so much. Told through the voice of a thirteen-year-old girl in 1964, this is very readable...I will recommend this book to my book club for discussion." —annar

"I thought the characters were all very well-developed. You know who they are, what makes them 'tick' and like or don't like them. I was drawn into the mystery by the sense of foreboding." —joang

"I really enjoyed the book, especially the references To Kill a Mockingbird... Corky's father's drugstore was so vividly described that I was sure it was one that I had frequented in my much younger days." —lar

The history of American segregation, along with changes to it in the 1960s, is sometimes taught and discussed today in a way that is very textbook. This is a great disservice to younger people, as it fails to humanize for them the everyday experiences of those who lived during the period. Some younger people may have never thought, for example, about what a day in the life of students in college dorms looked like during the horrific growing pains of desegregation. Or about how Black students navigated studying abroad at the time. Or, more broadly, about how Black people maneuvered in interracial relationships — romantic and otherwise.

Each short story is an observation of individual lives. Oliver wrote many of these stories in her early 20s, during the early-to-mid '60s, and this posthumous collection brings a youthful, introspective twist to our comprehension of the time. It is a unique peek into the past, and, in many ways, a soothsaying of the future we're living in. ... continued

Diane Oliver's Neighbors and Other Stories, featured above, is just one of 200+ books in our 1960s and '70s category. Head on over to discover more featured recommendations set during this period in locations all over the world, both fiction and non-fiction.

This is one of 100+ themed categories you can explore on BookBrowse to find the perfect read for your book club or yourself. Members can access all categories and filters to narrow their browsing, while non-members have limited access.

Dear Reader,

We Must Not Think of Ourselves is a novel I never expected to write. I had no ambition to tell a story about the Holocaust; people like Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi had already done the brutal job as perfectly as it could be done. I could not imagine attempting to put myself in their company.

But in July 2019, I discovered the stories of the people of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Or, more specifically, during a family trip to Warsaw, a tour guide brought us to the Jewish Historical Institute, a prosaic name for an extraordinary place. The institute houses the Emanuel Ringelblum Archive, the work of thirty-two secret diarists who, under the direction of historian Emanuel Ringelblum, secretly recorded everything about their imprisonment in the ghetto from 1940–1943. In comprehensive detail, their reports describe the ghetto's schools, synagogues, and prisons; its marriages and births; its struggles to feed its population; and its terror at the oncoming deportations to Treblinka. Their work constitutes the most significant written testimony of what was once Europe's largest Jewish community. ... continued

The night cleaner comes and does what she does best—sorts out the messes of the daytime employees. None of them know her, but she knows everything about them. Disturbing and funny in equal measures.

"Wells is a keen observer of the mundane indignities and petty dramas of office life. Rarely has cubicle culture been depicted in such griminess or with such glee." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"So inappropriately fun to read." —Booklist (starred review)

We have five hardcover copies of The Cleaner by Brandi Wells to give away.

This offer will end on March 5 and is open to residents of the USA, except for BookBrowse members who are welcome to enter wherever they live. If a member not resident in the US wins, they receive an extension to their membership.

BookBrowse Highlights is one of our four free newsletters. We also offer Publishing This Week every Sunday, and Book Club News and Librarian News monthly.

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