Crossing to Safety

I can't imagine a book that could portray everyday life more faithfully and more poetically than Crossing to Safety. Some of my admiration for the book probably comes from the fact that I fall right in the middle of the target audience. I'm white, married with children, middle class, about the same age as the main characters are for a large part of the story, went to college and have lived in both the East and Western United States. Being so perfectly aligned with the demographics of the main characters in the book, I felt that with every page and every scene, something that could have happened to me or to my friends or family was happening. The only difference was the time period in which the story takes place, and this difference was enough to take what otherwise could have been mundane and made it fascinating and intimate. I felt I was transported back a couple generations to what life could have been for me.

I don't know how this book would be received by someone from another country or someone who grew up differently in the US, but for me, it's a story of friendships and experiences that I are close enough to home as to make them something I can aspire to live for myself.