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