Anthem

Starred review from August 1, 2019
Two teenagers take a road trip--searching for a fugitive family member and finding...America. It's June 1969. Hints that her estranged but beloved big brother, Barry, has fetched up in San Francisco prompt 14-year-old Molly to enlist their fledgling-drummer cousin, Norman, 17, as driver and (with the collusion of their newly liberated moms) head west from Charleston in an old school bus. Quickly turning into anything but a straight run, the journey plunges the naïve but resilient travelers into a succession of youth-culture hot spots from Atlanta's funky Strip to a commune in New Mexico, with stops at renowned recording studios and live-music venues. Wiles opens and closes this musically and culturally immersive road trip with extensive montages of period news photos, quotes, headlines, and lyrics, scatters smaller documentary sheaves throughout, and enriches the song titles at each chapter head with production notes. The glittering supporting cast includes famed session musician Hal Blaine, Duane Allman, Elvis, and Wavy Gravy. While leaving the era's more-conservative, racist majority visible but at a remove from her white protagonists, the author introduces them to an interracial couple with a baby and a same-sex couple of Vietnam vets. In the end, Barry's fate takes on minor significance next to the profound changes the trip has wrought on their hearts and minds. No sex or drugs--but plenty of live, heady rock-'n'-roll. (author's note, timeline, several bibliographies) (Historical fiction. 11-13)

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August 12, 2019
In this conclusion to Wiles’s Sixties Trilogy, which riffs on the music of the era, two cousins, Molly and Norman, head from Charleston to San Francisco in June 1969. They’re trying to locate Molly’s missing brother, Barry, who left after a fight with their father over U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and has now been summoned by letter to report for his pre-draft physical. As in her first two volumes, Countdown and Revolution, Wiles’s prodigious research informs the narrative, and each of five sections is introduced with photomontages, excerpts from news stories and speeches, and song lyrics. The jam-packed novel is long but adventurous as Norman insists on stopping frequently to feed his burgeoning interest in rock ’n’ roll and jazz; along the way, the cousins meet the likes of the Allman Brothers and Elvis and deliver some cymbals to Capitol Records in Los Angeles. If readers can get past the idea that the cousins’ mothers support Molly, 14, and Norman, 17, driving a rickety school bus cross-country to bring Barry home, they’ll have one hell of a nostalgia-driven road trip in store. Ages 9–12.

October 1, 2019

Gr 5-8-This third volume of Wiles's "Sixties Trilogy" evokes the conflicts, chaos, and deep emotions occurring in 1969 during the United States' controversial involvement in the Vietnam War. A fictional story follows Molly, 14, and Norman, 17, two cousins driving across the country in a school bus from Charleston, SC, to San Francisco to bring back Molly's brother Barry, who ran away to escape the draft. A wide-ranging collection of primary source documents-photographs, quotes, newspaper articles-help readers understand the historical context with its complex voices. The result is a "documentary novel" of great impact. Over time, Molly and Norman grow as they encounter people with different experiences and viewpoints-an army deserter, an interracial couple, a gay couple who are war veterans-and integrate these experiences into their worldview. They see black people and white people eating together, come across people living in a commune, and meet a variety of people from the music world. Molly learns to think more deeply about racial relations. Norman develops greater self-confidence and the ability to judge character. Their bond deepens as they mature. Music pervades the narrative, mirroring how it (according to the author's note) "saturated, permeated, buoyed, and informed Everything." VERDICT This is a book that takes root in readers' mind and stays there. A gripping read with a satisfying conclusion.-Myra Zarnowski, City University of New York

Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2019
Grades 5-8 *Starred Review* It's July 2, 1969, a year since 14-year-old Molly's beloved older brother Barry?following an altercation with his father over the Vietnam War?left their South Carolina home without a word. Now an official draft notice has arrived for him, and Molly is sent with her 17-year-old cousin, Norman, to find Barry and bring him home. So off the two go in Norman's old school bus on a quixotic quest to locate the missing Barry. Along the way, they have many adventures, a number involving music, about which Wiles writes beautifully and knowledgeably, for Norman is a drummer with hopes of starting a band. To his delight, they visit recording studios and meet the likes of Duane Allman and (gasp!) Elvis Presley. They pick up a stray dog and their share of human strays as well, including a young ex-soldier who appears to be suffering from PTSD. Their travels vividly paint a portrait of a country divided by war and knit together by music. Wiles, in this third volume of her Sixties Trilogy (Countdown, 2010; Revolution, 2014), intersperses the narrative with portfolios of contextual period photos, headlines, quotations, and more. The result is a brilliant exercise in verisimilitude. It's all complicated, of course, but the novel is wonderfully true to the reality and spirit of the time.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)