Why write about this era of the Vietnam War?

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We’ve had times in this country when we have been bitterly divided. I chose to visit one of those times. And consider this fact: the Vietnam War was fought over twenty-one years (1954 to 1975) and took the lives of nearly three million people, military and civilians, on both sides.

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My novel explores how high schoolers in 1969–1970 navigated a world full of uncertainty, division, and awakening—a time when protests over the Vietnam War, movements for racial justice, and shifting social norms all collided. In many ways, those themes resonate strongly today. Young people now are also coming of age during moments of social unrest, political polarization, and global upheaval.

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What connects the two eras is a sense of youth trying to find their voice amid widespread change. The details differ—the issues, technology, and culture—but the emotional experience of questioning authority, demanding justice, and struggling to define one’s values under pressure feels timeless.

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By looking back at 1969–1970, the novel reflects how cycles of protest, reform, and renewal continue. It suggests that while history rarely repeats itself exactly, it often rhymes—and every generation must decide what kind of future to fight for.

Finally, what we have seen in our country echoes some of the chaos of the Vietnam era. As Walter Cronkite reported on CBS Evening News on May 4, 1970 after the Kent State shootings, “One must wonder if this is the United States of America, the greatest free democracy in the world. Some might suggest this is a nation at war with itself.”

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Why 1969?

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1969 was a time when the anti-Vietnam anger in America was boiling. By October of 1969, a single act of protest—M Day, the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam—was a strike against the war that involved thousands. While peaceful, the march around the White House and on the streets of Washington triggered a series of mass demonstrations across the country.

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Talk about the music that permeates the story.

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Music has always been a focal point for me, so it felt essential that the soundtrack of the era permeates this story. Discovering the scene of Pete Seeger standing across from the White House, leading a crowd in singing Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance,” gave me chills. In reimagining this consequential historical period, I knew I would weave in moments where music grounded the story, made it feel authentic and come alive.

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There is a strong bond between music and social change, with songs addressing urgent social issues. The Sixties was a time when popular music could be more than entertainment—it could be discourse, protest, and poetry.

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Your background is in journalism. Why write fiction?

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Writing at the intersection of reality and imagination offers readers clarity around the human condition, particularly in a fractured and polarized world. Stories matter; words matter in the way they inspire connection and effect change. We are influenced by everything we read and have ever read, so reading about the human condition is very powerful.

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From where does your inspiration come?

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My inspiration flows from deep, human-centered stories—especially those that connect personal experience to broader moments in history. I’m drawn to resilience, social consciousness, identity, and the tension between individual lives and sweeping social change.

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If I look at what I’ve written—stories inspired by my Jewish parents’ survival during World War II, by Bess Myerson’s courage, my formative years amid the cultural upheaval of the 1960s—I seem to be most inspired by transformation under pressure: how people become who they are when the world forces hard choices about justice, belonging, and truth.

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Were Columbus public schools integrated in 1969, before the Supreme Court mandate in 1974?

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Columbus Public Schools operated a largely segregated system with deliberate racial separation before 1969. A few sources cited a “freedom of choice” plan that began in 1964, desegregating one grade per year starting with 12th grade but experts have told me they found no evidence that the school district implemented such a plan or began voluntary integration. I attended Eastmoor High School, a Columbus Public School, from 1968 to 1971. It was racially diverse and we didn’t know if it resulted from voluntary busing or the makeup of that portion of east Columbus. 

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From 1871, Ohio state law mandated complete racial separation in Columbus schools, creating a dual system with Black-only facilities. This separation persisted post-Brown v. Board of Education (1954) through gerrymandered boundaries that confined Black students to specific “enclaves,” ensuring minimal mixing despite some high school integration by the early 1900s. 

 

Amid national momentum from cases like Green v. County School Board (1968), the Columbus School board adopted faculty integration and optional attendance zones, however the latter were used to exacerbate racial imbalance in the schools through boundary changes and other policies that allowed white students living in Black districts to attend predominantly white schools. There was no evidence that these policies in the Columbus Public Schools were created or maintained for racially neutral reasons.

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​In the fictional Waverley High, I use voluntary busing to create a multiracial school community as an example of some efforts to create more racially mixed schools in Columbus and the Midwest, but in Columbus in the late 1960s, boundary redrawing and ad hoc diversity planning seemed to be the case, rather than a voluntary busing/open-enrollment program. There are examples of Midwestern public schools that experimented with voluntary busing or open-enrollment-style transfers to build more racially mixed schools, though the scale and success varied widely. One clear example is Lansing, Michigan, where a voluntary integration plan in the 1960s bused more than 800 mostly white students to eight elementary schools, and the program was explicitly described as voluntary integration. Another Midwestern example is Evanston, Illinois, which began a busing-for-integration program in 1967. Chicago also had efforts in the 1967–68 school year to move Black children into underused schools in white neighborhoods, but that plan faced strong resistance and was scaled back.

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Voluntary integration avoided federal coercion, responded to NAACP pressure, and followed Southern precedents like accelerated “freedom of choice” plans. But it was not until the Supreme Court’s Decision in Pennick v. Columbus (1979) that the Columbus School Board was ordered to submit new plans for desegregation that actually led to integration of Columbus Public Schools, in combination with busing requirements. Thus, formal desegregation was not implemented until 1979.