Postcards in the Attic

It's 1952 in small-town Middle America, and Lizzie Kerrigan is an all-American teenage girl entering the throes of first love with high school hero Johnny Rochester, whose sexy saunter and seductive blue eyes capture her heart and her imagination. But as their love blossoms, the strict morals of the 1950s smother the simmering flames of young love and cause the greatest disappointment of Lizzie s life. More than 50 years later, twice married and a grandmother, Lizzie Kerrigan reaches out and reconnects with Johnny Rochester, reopening her mind and heart to what was, in order to prove whether Faulkner s words are true: 'The past is never dead. In fact, it s not even past.' 'Postcards in the Attic,' Jackie Bradley's debut novel and its companion album, offers a glimpse at Midwestern American life in the 1950s: They worried about the H-Bomb, not the F-bomb. Polio had been eradicated, but Daddy could be drafted to fight in Korea. Pregnant girls went to a special home, while good girls went to college to receive an MRS. degree. Then as now, it was tough being a teenager, but, as Postcards in the Attic shows, there were different social and familial tensions that could wreak havoc on teenage hearts with repercussions for years to come.