An American Tune [Paperback]

While reluctantly accompanying her husband and daughter to freshman orientation at Indiana University, Nora Quillen hears someone call her name, a name she has not heard in more than 25 years. Not even her husband knows that back in the 60s she was Jane Barth, a student deeply involved in the antiwar movement. An American Tune moves back and forth in time, telling the story of Jane, a girl from a working-class family who fled town after she was complicit in a deadly bombing, and Nora, the woman she became, a wife and mother living a quiet life in northern Michigan. An achingly poignant account of a family crushed under the weight of suppressed truths, now available as a Break Away Book Club Edition, An American Tune illuminates the irrevocability of our choices and how those choices come to compose the tune of our lives.

Shoup's novel is most compelling in its historical portrayal of university life in the turbulent 1960s . . .Barbara Shoup has written a rich and timely story about one generations outrage and the long reverberations of secrets. Her plot has much to say about the tangle of responsibility and how an ill-advised war disrupts an intricate network of ordinary American lives. A striking and memorable novel warm, sage, and beautifully written.The story of Jane and Noraand what happens when these two lives convergeheld me in great suspense. This highly readable novel isnt afraid to talk liberal politics during wartime, nor is it afraid to tell an epic love story. I loved everything about Barb Shoups An American Tune.An American Tune kept me on the edge of my seat while at the same time wanting to savor the evocative, memorable and true sentences along with way. Barbara Shoups exasperating yet loveable characters felt so real that I longed to lure them into my kitchen for a cup of coffee so I could spend more time with them. Shoup brings the Sixties back to life with wry humor and sympathy, reminding us all the while that we have never left its l¼