In this brilliant new novel—her first for adults since Summer Sisters—Judy Blume takes us back to the 1950s and introduces us to the town of Elizabeth, New Jersey, where she herself grew up. Here she imagines and weaves together a vivid portrait of three generations of families, friends, and strangers, whose lives are profoundly changed during one winter. At the center of an extraordinary cast of characters are fifteen-year-old Miri Ammerman and her spirited single mother, Rusty. Their warm and resonant stories are set against the backdrop of a real-life tragedy that struck the town when a series of airplanes fell from the sky, leaving the community reeling. Gripping, authentic, and unforgettable, In the Unlikely Event has all the hallmarks of this renowned author’s deft narrative magic.

 
 
 

An Amazon Best Book of June 2015: Three planes crash in a small town in New Jersey over the course of just two short months. Sounds like the backdrop of a horror movie, or in this post 9/11 world, something more sinister. But this actually happened in Elizabeth, New Jersey in the early 1950s, when beloved children’s author Judy Blume (Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.) was a young girl, experiencing the horror firsthand. Who, or what, was responsible—Communists? Martians? With no obvious explanation to cling to for comfort, this terrified community could only wait for something much bigger than the next shoe to drop. This is all big, mind-blowing stuff. But in her novel In the Unlikely Event, which like Summer Sisters is written for an adult audience, Blume travels back to that time and tells the more intimate stories within the larger one, to help us better comprehend the incomprehensible, and learn the lessons that are the only bright side of catastrophe. And the overarching moral, here, is to not let fear limit your possibilities. Through the various characters that inhabit this multigenerational tale, Blume beseeches us to not be afraid to get on a plane, take career risks, pursue your dreams, fall in love…After all, life is made up of unlikely events, and they “aren’t all bad. There are good ones, too.” --–Erin Kodicek

Recommended to book clubs by 1 of 4 members.