The Summit: Books Set In The 1940's & 1950's
/100 Years In Books: The Decades Series
The 1940s towered over every other decade of the 20th century, overflowing with sorrow, patriotism and ultimately, hope for the dawn of a new era. As we emerged from the war it was said that the world “stood at the summit of change for the better”. While we certainly saw booms of both babies and economy, resulting in the notion of an ideal suburbia, we were also confronted with the certainty that not all was created equal. And so began two pivotal landmarks in history; the civil rights movement and the battle of equal rights for women.
As you would expect, at the outset of this period stories of triumph over tragedy reigned supreme. A dominant trend in book publishing focused on wartime experiences and symbolized the fight for freedom. Often, the stories were written from fictional perspectives, enabling certain reckonings that would prove more painful within the confessional structure of a memoir.
As prosperity began to take hold, a certain tone of arrogance and superiority gained a greater foothold in literature. Characters emerged to populate a literary counterculture; rife with angst, egotism and melancholy that bordered on whining. Controversial fiction also began to crop up, providing some of the most talked about books even to this date, such as Lolita.
Tag along as we wander through reads set in these decades. Some will be emblematic of the times and others will play with our recollections and perceptions. All will offer up an experience that can only be found in the pages of well written books.
Books Set In The 1940’s…
The Bakers Secret – Stephen P. Kierman
In the years that her village has suffered under the enemy, Emma has silently and stealthily fought back. Each day, she receives an extra ration of flour to bake a dozen baguettes for the occupying troops. And each day, she mixes that precious flour with ground straw to create enough dough for two extra loaves, contraband bread she shares with the hungry villagers. Under the watchful eyes of armed soldiers, she builds a clandestine network of barter and trade that she and the villagers use to thwart their occupiers. A tale of courage, determination, optimism and the resilience of the human spirit.
Suite Francaise – Irene Nemirarsky
The author is amazingly sensitive in her depiction of changing, often contradictory emotions, but her attention to the personal is matched by her sharp-eyed discussion of small-town life and the politics of occupation. In this book, the French villagers see the Germans as oppressive warriors, but also as handsome young men, and occupation does nothing to remedy the condescension and envy that bedevil relations between rich and poor. Subtle, often fiercely ironic, and deeply compassionate, it is both a piercing record of its time and a humane, profoundly moving novel.
The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society – Mary Ann Shaffer
As London is emerging from WWII, Juliet, a writer, is looking for the subject of her next book. She begins exchanging letters with a man she's never met, a native of the island of Guernsey. Through their letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of the man and his eccentric friends. As she learns about their tastes in books, she also comes to understand the impact that German occupation has had on their lives.
At The Wolf’s Table – Rosella Postorino
Three times a day, ten women go to Hitler's secret headquarters, the Wolf's Lair, to eat his meals before he does to ensure they are safe. As the women are forced to eat what might kill them, they begin to divide into those loyal to Hitler, and those who insist they are not Nazis. This book is based on a true account and provides a unique and intimate perspective on an abhorrent time in history.
The Huntress – Kate Quinn
Fascinating novel about a battle-haunted English journalist and a Russian female bomber pilot who join forces to track a Nazi war criminal gone to ground in America. Bold and fearless, Nina always dreamed of flying. When the Nazis attack, she risks everything to join the legendary Night Witches, an all-female bomber regiment wreaking havoc on the invading Germans. When she is stranded behind enemy lines, she becomes the prey of a lethal Nazi murderess known as the Huntress, and only her bravery and cunning will keep her alive. Transformed by the horrors he has witnessed, British war correspondent Ian Graham has become a Nazi hunter. Yet one target eludes him: a vicious predator known as the Huntress.
The Book Thief – Marcus Zusak
Liesel's life is changed when she picks up an object hidden in the snow at her brother's graveside. It becomes her first act of book thievery, and it begins her love affair with books and words. With the help of her foster father, she learns to read, and soon she is stealing more books; from Nazi book-burnings to the mayor's wife's library. She shares her stolen books with neighbors, and with the Jewish man that her foster family is hiding in their basement.
A Lesson Before Dying – Ernest J Gaines
Set in a small Cajun community, a young black man is in the wrong place at the wrong time when a liquor store shooting leaves three men dead. As the only survivor, he is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Grant Wiggins left his hometown to attend university and has returned to teach at the plantation school. His aunt persuades him to visit the prisoner in jail to share some of his learning so that he can "die a man."
Winter Garden – Kristin Hannah
This story opens in modern-day with two adult sisters, Meredith and Nina, who are as different as can be. But they remain connected by their beloved father and by the Russian fairy tale their cold, disapproving mother sometimes told them at night. When their father falls ill, he makes the three women promise that the fairy tale will be told one last time, all the way to the end. What unfolds is the true story of the mother’s life in war-torn Leningrad. What the sisters are about to learn is a secret that will change everything.
Miss Peregrines Home For Peculiar Children – Ransom Riggs
A spine-tingling fantasy set on a remote island off the coast of Wales, and illustrated with vintage photography, this novel provides a thrilling reading experience. At the start of the book, a family tragedy sends 16-year-old Jacob journeying to the remote island where he discovers the ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. He discovers that the children who were quarantined on the deserted island may have also been dangerous and may still be alive.
Books Set In The 1950’s…
The Women’s Room – Marilyn French
In the 1950s, many American women left education and professional advancement behind in order to marry, only to find themselves adrift and unable to support themselves after divorcing their husbands twenty years later. Some became destitute; a few went insane. But many went back to school in the heyday of the Women’s Liberation movement and were swept up in the promise of equality for both sexes. The Women’s Room tells the story of one such woman: a suburban housewife named Mira who divorces her loathsome husband and returns to graduate school at Harvard.
Lady Be Good – Amber Brock
Kitty is the winsome and clever only child of self-made hotel and nightclub tycoon Nicolas Tessler. Kitty may not have the same pedigree as the tennis club set she admires, but she still sees herself as every inch the socialite, spending her days perfecting her "look" and her nights charming all the blue-blooded boys who frequent her father's clubs. It seems like the fun will never end until Kitty's father issues a terrible ultimatum: she may no longer date the idle rich. A mischievous spin on the growing obsession with status.
Recipe For A Perfect Wife – Karma Brown
Alice leaves her publicity career to become a writer and follows her husband to the suburbs of New York. Learning to fill her days in a big empty house, she comes across a vintage cookbook in the basement and discovers hidden notes left by the home's previous owner, Nellie, a quintessential 1950s housewife. As Alice cooks her way through Nellie's recipes, she starts to uncover clues about her life. Juxtaposing Alice's life against Nellie, this is a story of how everything has changed, but in some ways nothing has changed.
Song Of A Captive Bird – Jasmin Darznik
All through her childhood in Tehran, Forugh is told that Persian daughters should be quiet and modest. She is taught only to obey, but she always finds ways to rebel; gossiping with her sister, venturing to the forbidden rooftop to roughhouse with her three brothers, writing poems to impress her strict, disapproving father, and sneaking out to flirt with a teenage paramour. During the summer of 1950, Forugh’s passion for poetry takes flight, and tradition seeks to clip her wings.
The After Party – Anton DiSclafani
Joan is the epitome of Texas glamour and the center of the 1950s Houston social scene. Tall, blonde, beautiful, and strong, she dominates the room and the gossip columns. Every man wants her; every woman wants to be her. Devoted to Joan since childhood, Cece is either her chaperone or her partner in crime, depending on whom you ask. When Joan’s radical behavior escalates one summer, Cece considers it her responsibility to bring her back to the fold, ultimately forcing a provocative choice to appear the only one that there is.
My Brilliant Friend – Elena Ferrante
Beginning in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, Elena Ferrante’s four-volume story spans almost sixty years, as its main characters, the fiery and unforgettable Lila and the bookish narrator, Elena, become women, wives, mothers, and leaders, all the while maintaining a complex and at times conflicted friendship. An epic and expansive work!
The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingslover
In 1959, a fiery evangelical Baptist preacher takes his family and mission to the Congo intent on "enlightening" the savages. The story is narrated by his wife and four daughters, one of whom is disabled but more aware than anyone realizes. The book is both a portrait of a family and the Congo society eager to cast off its colonial chains. With beautifully descriptive writing and well-developed characters, this book examines issues of American Christianity's effect on the Africans, as well as the effect of the African culture on the family.
The Swans Of Fifth Avenue – Melanie Benjamin
Centered around two dynamic historical figures, Truman Capote, the playwright, actor, and author of Breakfast At Tiffany's, and Babe Paley, a New York City socialite and style icon named to the International Best-Dressed Hall of Fame. this is the story of a scandalous and heart-wrenching friendship. This book is filled with gossip, scandal, and betrayal set in the glamorous, perfumed, and smoky atmosphere of New York's high society.
The Stationery Shop Of Tehran – Marjan Kamaili
Set against the backdrop of the Iranian Coup, Roya, an idealistic teenage girl finds a literary oasis in the neighborhood book and stationery shop. The owner introduces her to his favorite customer, the handsome Rumi who has a passion for justice and poetry. The two fall in love but are separated on the eve of their marriage. Reunited sixty years later when both are living in America, together they discover the truth of what really happened all those years ago in the town square.
A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
This novel is, at its core, a love story: Lata and her mother, Rupa, are both trying to find, through love or through exacting maternal appraisal, a suitable boy for Lata to marry. Set in the early 1950s, in an India newly independent and struggling through a time of crisis, A Suitable Boy takes us into the richly imagined world of four large extended families and spins a compulsively readable tale of their lives and loves. A sweeping panoramic portrait of a complex, multiethnic society in flux.
Boy, Snow, Bird – Helen Oyeyemi
In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty, the opposite of the life she’s left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she’d become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy’s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the father’s family as light skinned African Americans passing for white.
Twelve Angry Men – Reginald Roseh
A blistering character study and an examination of the American melting pot and the judicial system that keeps it in check, Twelve Angry Men holds at its core a deeply patriotic faith in the legal system. The story centers on Juror Eight, who is at first the sole holdout in an 11-1 guilty vote. Eight sets his sights not on proving the other jurors wrong but rather on getting them to look at the situation in a clear-eyed way not affected by their personal prejudices or biases.
