1961

1961 a novel narrating a fast-paced, fantastical “road trip” filled with grand historical vistas and events, memorable characters, humor, drama, and suspense. The memoir chronicles two boys’ adolescent growth in the thick of a tumultuous year. Penned from the perspective of sensitive and thoughtful JACK, this journey leads the boys and the reader from idyllic childhood days in Connecticut to horrific tragedy at Seattle’s Space Needle. Innocence lost. Life realized. Jack’s immense heart and ever-present love for family and best friend SPENCER forge his identity and destiny. SPENCER, a self-assured adventurous middle-class son of a pilot, stoically deals with loss when his father’s plane vanishes. In turn, he discovers fortitude as he globe-trots with Jack, his absolute confidant. Through a series of adventures so different from all he’s ever known, Spencer learns the importance of true friendship and self-worth. Jack and Spencer are thrust into thrilling, off-beat and downright fantastic situations. They rub shoulders with noted historical figures and manage to escape the “jaws of death” three times. Both friends are born on the same day, three hours apart. The drama begins on their birthday as the two thirteen-year-old boys nearly drown in a Connecticut river, and ends soon after the 25-year old men, passengers aboard the fateful Eastern flight 401 to Miami, crash into the Florida Everglades. This fast paced novel, 1961, transports the reader onboard their grand voyage from the family’s bases; the beach house set in the dunes of Perdido Key, Florida, the mansion in Bedford Hills, New York, the four-story granite Vienna manor, and the turn-of-the-century shingle-styled cottage high atop Maine’s rocky shore-lined cliffs. Head-on, the old-moneyed family faces an America gripped in racial tension, and a Europe in the heat of the Cold War. The mystery of Jack’s father’s occupation propels the family by plane, train, ship, and automobile. Their story is sha

Book Review Reviewed by Ray Simmons for Readers' Favorite I am in awe of T.W. Greene. His novel 1961 is written with such skill, grace, elegance, and power that I can’t help but wish I had written it about my life, my family, and my America. I was born in the South and I feel a certain kindred spirit with Southern writers, particularly the late, great Pat Conroy. But powerful writing about any region, that rings true to that region, attracts me. I love Steinbeck, so as a young man I went to California to experience it and compare his California with mine. Our experiences were different, but his picture and feel of life in the Salinas Valley rang beautifully true. I have lived in New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont, and only two writers have captured the feel of New England for me, so vividly, so skillfully, and so true that it thrusts my memory back to my life there and how truly American it can be. John Irving and now T.W. Greene. The novel 1961 captures the essence of a life, a lifestyle, and a time. T.W. Greene is a name to look out for. He writes with beauty, passion, and truth. In 1961, he has captured the essence of a decade and region, and ultimately, America itself. Rich in detail, with a host of characters that already loom large in American history, it is a quiet masterpiece. I was moved by the interview with John and Jackie Kennedy, and the thought "only in America" kept running through my mind. Big themes, themes still being played out on the stage that is America, run deeply and quietly through 1961. The characters are real, maybe people you know, but most of all, the story and the writing run true.