Title: In the unlikely event
Description: In 1987, Miri Ammerman returns to her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, to attend a commemoration of the worst year of her life. Thirty-five years earlier, when Miri was fifteen, and in love for the first time, a succession of airplanes fell from the sky, leaving a community reeling. Against this backdrop of actual events that Blume experienced in the early 1950s, when airline travel was new and exciting and everyone dreamed of going somewhere, she paints a vivid portrait of a particular time and place -- Nat King Cole singing "Unforgettable," Elizabeth Taylor haircuts, young (and not-so-young) love, explosive friendships, A-bomb hysteria, rumors of Communist threat. And a young journalist who makes his name reporting tragedy. Through it all, one generation reminds another that life goes on.
Subjects: Grief, Family secrets, Homecoming, Nineteen fifties, Aircraft accidents, Fiction, Fiction, historical, Fiction, family life, Jews, fiction, Fiction, coming of age, New jersey, fiction, nyt:combined-print-and-e-book-fiction=2015-06-21, New York Times bestseller, New York Times reviewed, Fiction, historical, general, Fiction, family life, general
Places: New Jersey, Elizabeth (N.J.), Elizabeth, N.J. Elizabeth