VVMBookBlog

It’s 1949, Francine Green lives in Los Angeles, is in love (from afar) with actor Montgomery Clift, and attends a private Catholic school.   Her rigid home life and  the strict rules from the nuns at her school have pretty much silenced any opinions Francine would think of expressing.  But then it’s her friendship with very out-spoken Sophie that finally challenges her to begin speaking up for herself.

1949 was in the time of McCarthyism, fears of the Soviet Union and Communists, and fears of possible atom bombs being used against the United States.  Senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin fed these fears by compiling lists of writers, actors, directors, newspaper editors, professors and any other people who he and his committee decided were sympathetic to the cause of Communism and therefore dangerous to the U.S.  These people were then “blacklisted” and lost their jobs and were unable to get jobs anywhere else.  It was a very scary time for our country.

So this is the backdrop of this story.  While visiting at Sophie’s house,  Francine meets Sophie’s father who is a screen writer for movies, and their friend, Jacob Mandelbaum, an actor who gets put on the suspect list and investigated by the FBI.  Francine’s experiences with Sophie cause her to question what she believes and how she can finally learn to really express what she believes.

I found this book really interesting, both from a historic perspective, and to see how Francine changed over the course of the book.  She really struggled with her feelings about not wanting to get in trouble but still  needing to act on what her conscience was telling her to do.  And, while I was not yet alive in 1949(!!!), I do remember having “duck and cover” drills in elementary school to practice what we would do if an atomic bomb fell. (However, I don’t think crouching under our desks with our heads covered by our hands would have been much help to us!) I lived in a small town in Wisconsin just east of St. Paul, and I remember a chart in the Minneapolis newspaper showing how far from the Twin Cities the damage from a bomb would reach.  Pretty scary at the time!