Windchill Summer

Starred review from May 29, 2000
The breezy, lighthearted tone of this debut novel immediately captures the reader's attention, but its guilelessness conceals a sophisticated, multifaceted evocation of the consequences of the Vietnam War, played out in the small town of Sweet Valley, Ark. What Cherry and her best friend, Baby, assume will be an ordinary summer before their senior year at college in 1969 veers abruptly off-course when a childhood friend, Carlene, is found beaten and drowned in the local lake. Everyday life lurches, then ambles on: at night, Cherry and Baby earn pocket money by peeling onions at the pickle plant, where Cherry meets Tripp, a Vietnam veteran who hails from Berkeley and who introduces her to all that name implies. Cherry develops a healthy doubt about the fire-and-brimstone faith in which she was raised ("It was scary how good I was getting at sin"). She also gradually comes to understand the way Carlene's murder has shaken the town, a place already shocked by the return from Vietnam of irrevocably altered hometown boys and haunted by those who didn't come back, like Carlene's ex-boyfriend, Jerry. Viewpoints intricately intermingled give voice to the thoughts, emotions and many secrets of a variety of compelling characters, through depictions of Baby and her family, the only Filipinos in Sweet Valley; throughflashbacks to Carlene's tumultuous childhood; through letters that Carlene and Jerry exchanged during the war. These many perspectives reveal one secret after another, and only the reader is privy to the network of enigmatic deceptions as a whole. Cherry's irresistible voice balances the story: each time the horrors of Vietnam (or of Sweet Valley's underbelly) invade, Cherry's vivacity fends them off, although her own path is rocky. In the end, the author (Norman Mailer's wife) makes her characters take the tough road, and her accomplished, bittersweet novel proves that they are hardy, resilient, and complex enough for a journey that readers will enjoy every step of the way. 12-city author tour.

February 1, 2000
Norman Mailer's wife draws on personal experience in this first novel about a young woman in Arkansas who begins questioning her mundane life.

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2000
YA-The Vietnam Conflict may have been in an area of the world far removed from the small town of Sweet Valley, AR, but when Tripp and Bean come home, they bring with them their nightmare memories of the killing and nothing is the same. Bean returns to his girlfriend, Baby. Tripp travels from California to Sweet Valley in his own quest for release from his past and falls in love with Cherry. The two young women try, often vainly, to cope with these young men and their double demons of wartime massacres and drugs. Other forces are at work in Sweet Valley, too. First one murder occurs, then another. Mailer captures all of the substance and flavor of small-town life in the late 1960s. While there is a great deal of action, the author's real focus is on the psychological development of her very real characters. Cherry's perspectives act as the moderating viewpoint and hers is often the common sense, middle-of-the-road approach. Baby is practical, to the point, and detail oriented. However, the mental anguish the young men carry becomes too strained for any help that the two young women might give. Mailer has taken a difficult period in America and presented a realistic tale of young people coping with serious issues of life, death, love of country, and growing into adulthood.-Pam Johnson, Fairfax County Public Library, VA

Copyright 2000 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2000
Forget that the author of this warm, compelling novel is Norman Mailer's wife. Just sit back and enjoy its virtues for their own sake. The time is 1969, and the place is the little Arkansas town of Sweet Valley. You remember 1969--the war in Vietnam, the sexual revolution, pot, rock 'n' roll, the moon landing, and other landmark social, political, and technological events. Cherry "is facing her last year of college and an unknown future, but this summer, like many other college students who had strange jobs in the summer, she works at the local pickle factory. Yet even in her rather insular life, big things happening in the outside world exert their influence. Disturbed vets are coming home, and Cherry's way of thinking, believing, and experiencing is irrevocably changed at the hands of a couple of these returned soldiers. As if saying good-bye to her virginity were not enough to enliven Cherry's summer, the dead body of a friend of hers turns up, and Cherry must confront not only the fact that a murder could take place in her small town, but also the reality of the killer's identity. Mailer has caught the tenor of the times in finely tuned prose, and Cherry and her supporting cast will strike many chords of recognition. The author's marital affiliation may prompt readers to open this moving coming-of-age tale, but the novel's quality will keep them from closing it. ((Reviewed March 15, 2000))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)