by Ward Just
First published 2005
Wilson Ravan is nineteen when his father starts carrying a gun. The winter of 1953 brings record cold to Chicago and death threats to Teddy Ravan's printing business from striking union workers. Wilson lives in Quarterday on Chicago's North Shore, caught between his father's unraveling world and his own uncertain future. That summer before college, he takes a newspaper job that pulls him into three different orbits. He works alongside working-class reporters who see class warfare everywhere. He spends evenings at glittering debutante parties among the wealthy elite. At home, he watches his parents wage their own cold war. These worlds crash together when Wilson falls for the strong-willed daughter of a psychiatrist haunted by his World War II past. When tragedy hits her family, buried secrets surface that shatter everything Wilson thought he knew about the people around him.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Chicago, North Shore, Quarterday
Period: 1953, World War II
256 pages · Paperback · Mariner Books