When the world was young
Subtitle: a novel
By: Elizabeth Gaffney
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Number of pages: 298
ISBN-13: 9781400064687; 9870812996012
Subjects: Family secrets; Single women; Household employees; World War, 1939-1945; Fiction
Description: Wally Baker is no ordinary girl. Living in her grandparents' Brooklyn Heights brownstone, she doesn't like dresses, needlepoint, or manners. Her love of Wonder Woman comics and ants makes her feel like a misfit-- especially in the shadow of her dazzling but unstable mother, Stella. This novel captures postwar Brooklyn through Wally's eyes, opening on V-J day, as she grows up with the rest of America. Reeling from her own unexpected wartime tragedy and navigating an increasingly fraught landscape, Wally is forced to confront painful truths about the world-- its sorrows, its prejudices, its conflicts, its limitations. But Wally also finds hope and strength in the unlikeliest places. A novel about the truths that divide and the love that keeps us together.
Table of contents: title: I. PARADE; title: 1. Radar; title: 2. Oleo; title: 3. A Balsa Wood Fleet; title: 4. Brothers; title: 5. The War Effort; title: 6. The Department of Military Multiplication; title: 7. The Warehouse; title: 8. Natural History; title: 9. The Cape; title: 10. The Shadow; title: 11. The Queen; title: II. FAIL-SAFE; title: 12. Red Door; title: 13. Special Delivery; title: 14. Louise; title: 15. A Thing of Beauty; title: 16. The Cake; title: 17. Finger Sandwiches; title: 18. The Niche; title: 19. Mammy's Pantry; title: 20. Picnic; title: 21. Suspicions; title: 22. The Traveling Salesman Problem; title: 23. The Ant Lion; title: 24. Mothballs; title: 25. A Calling; title: III. PHEROMONES; title: 26. Letters; title: 27. Uptown / Downtown; title: 28. Chemistry; title: 29. The Tiger Beetle; title: 30. The Half Grapefruit; title: 31. Scrapbooking; title: 32. Dear Wally; title: 33. Answers; title: 34. Good News; title: 35. Beatrice.