The Summer of '69

Written by Todd Strasser

Narrated by Graham Halstead

Drawing from his teenage years, Todd Strasser's novel revisits a tumultuous era and takes readers on a psychedelically tinged trip of a lifetime. With his girlfriend, Robin, away in Canada, eighteen-year-old Lucas Baker's only plans for the summer are to mellow out with his friends, smoke weed, drop a tab or two, and head out in his microbus for a three-day happening called the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. But life veers dramatically off track when he suddenly finds himself in danger of being drafted and sent to fight in Vietnam. If that isn't heavy enough, there's also the free-loving (and undeniably alluring) Tinsley, who seems determined to test Lucas's resolve to stay faithful to Robin; a frighteningly bad trip at a Led Zeppelin concert; a run-in with an angry motorcycle gang; parents who appear headed for a divorce; and a friend on the front lines in 'Nam who's in mortal danger of not making it back. As the pressures grow, it's not long before Lucas finds himself knocked so far down, it's starting to look like up to him. When tuning in, turning on, and dropping out is no longer enough, what else is there?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781980062288

Todd Strasser

Todd Strasser, author of Give a Boy a Gun, Boot Camp, If I Grow Up, and the Help, I’m Trapped . . . series, has written wildly popular middle-grade and teen books of all genres. When he's not speaking at schools and conferences, he makes his home in a suburb of New York City. Todd is active in a number of sports but enjoys surfing most of all. Visit him online at www.toddstrasser.com.

Reviews for The Summer of '69

[sszkutak_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Summer of ’69 was an interesting book, it is young adult historical fiction of sorts and it just wasn’t really my style of book.The book follows Lucas, a teen who is trying to spend his summer like any normal teen, going to shows, hanging with friends, and just relaxing; but it is the summer of ’69 and the threat of being shipped off to fight in a war he does not believe in is getting to him. As far as characters go, Lucas goes through a lot in this book. His girlfriend breaks up with him via snail mail letter, not even a phone call, for another guy, he gets his draft letter and his ‘sorry no thank you’ letters from universities, and now he is trying to cope with it all. On top of all that his parents have some weird separation in the same household things going on too and his life is in shambles. The characters were realistic, and their growth was well thought out, but the overall story just fell flat for me.While there were some climaxes in the plot, they were short and throughout the story, which meant that there wasn’t a big build up anywhere for the readers (me) to look forward to as something to spur reading. I found the story overall interesting but the motivation to keep reading it was lacking and it was not really my jam. I think if you like a male point of view and the hippy vibe that this book pulls, this might be one for you, but it is more of a monologue than a plot driven book.

[racrowell-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The late 1960s were undeniably a period of social change on many levels, although the pace of change was not the same in all parts of the country. Todd Strasser’s experiences growing up in New York were the basis for his novel Summer of ’69 and include many of the major issues of the time. His family was clearly affected by traditional role expectations for husbands and wives with the added pressures of dealing with a special needs child in an era before there was much, if any, understanding of or support for such children. In a note on the cover, Strasser says of that summer, “For me, it was three months of drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, risk, and adventure. But beneath that groovy surface, it was a period of gnawing emotional pain, confusion, and even danger.” Drugs and good rock ‘n’ roll would have been much easier to experience in New York than in other areas. Risk, pain, and confusion however were and are not uncommon in the struggle to grow up. A common concern for all young men of that era, regardless of where they lived, was the draft and what to do about it; the truly life-and-death potential for how they answered that question is probably inconceivable to anyone who has grown up with an all-volunteer military.Some reviewers have taken issue with Lucas’ immaturity and his attitudes toward the young women in his life. To me those things contributed to the novel’s authenticity. His attitudes were typical of the times (and better than some I encountered) and, after 40+ years working with high school students, I can state with confidence that immaturity among American males in their late teens remains the all too common.I really enjoyed Summer of ’69 and I appreciate receiving the ARC through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program. I would like to see it offer a little more context for the YA audience - maybe an expanded comment at the beginning or some suggested sources for more information. It would also be a good choice for our local book club that describes itself as being for readers “who are a little less "Y" and a bit more "A".

[pallandavid · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I so enjoyed this book! I love that it told the story of a group of friends during the late '60's that didn't center on stereotypical hippy, war protestor of the Viet Nam era. Yes, it did talk about the war and how the young people were looked at as "hippies" but that was descriptive. It is a coming of age story following a young man as he comes to terms with life after high school. Facing parents that are not a couple but still live in the same house. Facing his future when he didn't properly prepare while in high school - will he be drafted? enlist? be one of the lucky ones who doesn't have to face either? He attends concerts with his buddies and they are described as they were (I was at similar concerts during this time period and they weren't all glamorous and cool as shown in so many modern re-tellings).Perhaps I see some of my life in the book. I felt comfortable and a part of the telling. It made me happy. I recommend this book. Highly!

[thebacklistbook · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book is really not my speed at all. I just can't get past the writing style, it feels very elegiac. I am also really, really, not into drugs at all. I hate reading about drug use. To be clear I believe we need more proper and positive rep of recovery and I can read those stories. I just don't hold with reading about drugs being the norm or even "healthy". To be fair I have only read about 30 pages of this book. It may be just what someone else needs/wants to read.

[ltcl_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

1969 was a time of unrest and for Lucas is was also an awakening. He believes he and his girlfriend Robin will go to college out East, stay high on drugs and each other, and the glorious days of sex, drugs and rock and roll will never end. Except it does end. In the complete upheaval of his summer Robin will leave him, he won't get accepted into college and his draft number will come up. Off to last-minute adventures in a beat up VW bus and motorcycle to Canada and Woodstock where hopefully Lucas will come up with a plan and save his life. This is for older readers but still rings true as a good coming of age story for any decade. I did enjoy his attempts at Haiku. My thanks to the publisher for the advance copy.

[sophroniaborgia · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

America in the 1960s has been a subject of eternal fascination for a lot of people. As someone who didn't consciously live through the time period, I was interested in reading a book by an author, Todd Strasser, who has written many books for teens over the years and who has apparently based many of the incidents in the book on his own memories of the time. It's a well-written novel of a suburban kid from a privileged but dysfunctional family who's been drawn to hippie culture, rock music, and drugs, and how and why he gets his act together. It's a little hard to get into this book at first. The world has changed quite a bit since the summer of '69, and from the perspective of a person in 2019, it's difficult to put yourself in the mindset of a kid who drops acid (handed to him by a total stranger) while driving down the interstate, calls his girlfriend his "ladylove" (yeesh!), and refers to himself as a "member of a despised minority," meaning long-haired weirdos. But over the course of this summer, life forces him to see past his own nose and realize that he needs to check his perspective and take an active role in his life rather than passively dropping out, and that's a theme that resonates with any generation.The element of this story that worked best was Lucas's desperate efforts to avoid fighting in Vietnam. Despite all the fun that Lucas has attending concerts with his friends, including the famous Woodstock, the threat of being drafted hangs over everything he does. Here Lucas squarely faces the fact that his own immaturity has doomed him. As his draft counselor points out, he's a privileged white kid from the suburbs who had many opportunities to avoid the draft that weren't available to other kids, but he squandered them all, and now his chances seem to have run out. The letters from his friend in the service are heartbreaking and terrifying, and the extremes Lucas is willing to take to avoid that fate bring home how scary it must have been for kids living at a time when they faced being shipped overseas to a bloody war that was already bitterly dividing the country.The other impetus for Lucas's maturity, his difficult relationship with his girlfriend Robin, was a bit of a disappointment. Unfortunately, she left for summer camp early in the book and mostly appeared as the author of a few brief letters. There was much more about Tinsley, the free-love advocate who accompanies Lucas on some of his summer adventures, than there was about Robin and why she and Lucas made such a great couple. This made Robin seem fickle and undeveloped as a character and made the eventual resolution of their problems seem rushed and forced. I was hoping to see more of Lucas himself as a changed man and how he was making things happen in the world, rather than feeling that he was just doing things in order to get on his girlfriend's good side.But in total, this book was an interesting and involving read. I can imagine that any post-millennial who has developed a fascination for the 1960s and wonders what it was really like for all those kids at Woodstock would enjoy reading this look back at being a teenager in a time when teens really seemed to be changing the world.

[sandyamcpherson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Todd Strasser’s story of a summer during the hippie era turned out to be a surprise for me. Some background to my expectations seems necessary, to provide the context for my review of Summer of ‘69: in 1969 I lived in the hippie capital of Canada (Victoria, BC). My experience of embracing the counterculture society of the day was rather different (followng a sustainable lifestyle, supporting a socially-active justice system, supporting anti-war protests [we hated Nixon, Dow Chemical and our University’s unenlightened white-man administration], sheltering draft-dodgers, living in a communal house, attending university). Yes, there was a lot of drug use amongst the 20-somethings (marijuana, hash, LSD, mushrooms [Psilocybe mexicana grows rampantly in the Pacific Northwest], the latter two were still legal to possess). But in the mid- to late-sixties, the younger kids in high school were not turning on and getting wasted. That was more a feature of the mid 1970’s, when grass seemed mainstream and a great deal of it grown locally (BC Gold). So my context for the 1969 milieu Strasser describes was somewhat different. Hence, I was expecting something groooovy, man! A story that embraced more flower-power, more social activism and maybe carrying a Haight-Ashbury vibe.Instead, Todd wrote a poignant memoir, albeit somewhat fictionalized (I think), of being in high school, having love-relationship problems, using drugs to escape the realities of living in a sadly dysfunctional family and facing the iniquitous draft. New York was obviously a radically different environment to the softer counterculture-back-to-the-landers group where I hung out on Vancouver Island. Strasser's narrative swept back to the era of Nixon, the relentless draft of kids too young to ever be forced overseas and the horrors of ‘Nam. I relived the memories of some sad and some very resilient draft dodgers. I’d forgotten the hilarity of post-weed munchies and how we loved a music scene that was so vibrant. So, yeah, it was a book both of memories as well as gaining some inside knowledge ~ horrors detailed in Chris’ letters from the war zone and what Lucas had to cope with in his young life. You’ll note I gave this book a five-star rating. However, a couple aspects weren’t 5-star features: if Rudy was in Saskatchewan in 1968-1970, he would definitely have found a supportive music scene, so I wonder if Strasser just picked the locale based on an uninformed stereotype. There were better communities to cultivate that angle. The other development that seemed strange was the flip flop relationship with Robin. Such neediness in a pothead-acid-dropping kid just out of high school didn’t translate into a realistic liaison with the persona created for Robin. Lucas certainly matured as the summer progressed, although in the end he didn’t seem to acknowledge the effect soft drugs were having on his capacity to think clearly. Robin was ‘straight’ in the sense that she saw what she wanted in her education towards an adult career. She had insights into her behaviour being unfavourably modified by hanging out with Lucas. So the book’s conclusion didn’t quite add up there. It was still a great read, despite these criticisms, and certainly prompts me to check out Strasser's other work.P.S. This is my unbiased, candid review of an award from Early Reviewer's /Candlestick's ARC.