In the unlikely event

About this book

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

  • aircraft accidents
  • family secrets
  • fiction
  • fiction, coming of age
  • fiction, family life
  • fiction, family life, general
  • fiction, historical
  • fiction, historical, general
  • grief
  • homecoming
  • jews, fiction
  • new jersey, fiction
  • new york times bestseller
  • new york times reviewed
  • nineteen fifties
  • nyt:combined-print-and-e-book-fiction=2015-06-21