Take a Left at Tomorrow
Take a Left at Tomorrow is a compelling love story that recreates landmark events of the late 1960s.
As the novel opens, Joey, a bright, pretty teenager growing up near the Minnesota Iron Range, juggles her high school classes with caring for her three brothers. Her mother died several years before, and her father is often absent, traveling for his railroad job. Though she lives at a time when most girls aspire to be secretaries, stewardesses, or housewives, Joey wants a different future—to be elsewhere “by about a million miles.” She is accepted to study at a prestigious acting school in California.
A midnight motorcycle ride to visit her mother’s grave with charismatic, worldly, and handsome Kit changes Joey’s life, though. Kit strides “like a guy who knew where he was going and didn’t give a hoot what anyone thought about it.” Joey is smitten. When Kit returns from the Vietnam War, they build a life together, first at a rustic farm in rural Minnesota, then in the Twin Cities. Their relationship is complicated by Kit’s emotional and physical wounds from combat. While Joey studies acting and runs the household, Kit leads local war protests, assembling a “tribe” of antiwar activists—“peaceniks, doves, student protesters, filthy longhairs…hippie radicals.”
Joey and Kit experience firsthand the chaotic riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the “peace-and-love vibe” of the Woodstock music festival, the shootings at Kent State, and the 1969 march on Washington. As they travel the tumultuous cultural landscape in their Volkswagen bus, dubbed Rosie, Joey describes their experiences with lively details.
A captivating novel set amidst 1960s protest movements, Take a Left at Tomorrow is eye-opening and filled with powerful reminders of that turbulent, idealistic era.
Reviewed by
Kristen Rabe
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