A Hard Rain by Frye Gaillard ~ a Review

by Susan Roberts

How it begins

The 60s were the defining years of my life. In 1961, I turned 13 so all of my formative teenage years were lived during this tumultuous decade. When I think back on those years and some of the things that happened, I wonder if I am remembering it all correctly. Frye Gaillard's new book was a reminder for me of all that went on in those years. Some people will view A HARD RAIN as a history book, I view it as a way to remember those years.

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August 2018; NewSouth Books
978-1588383440; ebook, print (704 pages)
nonfiction, U.S. History

A HARD RAIN is a large book - over 700 pages - divided up by years in the 60s and the significant events of each year. It combines politics, the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK, the Vietnam protests, the civil rights movement, the women's movement and so much more. Plus it recognizes the strong role that music played in this decade - Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Motown just to name a few.   Reading this book brought back so many memories to me - both happy and sad. This is a book that will stay on my bookshelves as a reference to dig down deeper into some of my fading memories.

The author says it best: “There are many different ways to remember the sixties,” Gaillard writes, “and this is mine. There was in these years the sense of a steady unfolding of time as if history were on a forced march, and the changes spread to every corner of our lives. As future generations debate the meaning of the decade, I hope to offer a sense of how it felt to have lived it. A Hard Rain is one writer’s reconstruction and remembrance of a transcendent era ― one that, for better or worse, lives with us still.”

About the Author:  

Frye Gaillard is an award-winning journalist with over 20 published works on Southern history and culture, including Watermelon Wine; Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement that Changed America; The Books That Mattered: A Reader's Memoir; Journey to the Wilderness: War, Memory, and a Southern Family's Civil War Letters; and, most recently, Go South to Freedom. Writer-in-residence at the University of South Alabama, he is also John Egerton Scholar in Residence at the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi. He is the winner of the Clarence Cason Award for Nonfiction Writing, the Lillian Smith Book Award, and the Eugene Current-Garcia Award For Distinction in Literary Scholarship.

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Susan Roberts lives in North Carolina when she isn't traveling. She and her husband enjoy traveling, gardening and spending time with their family and friends. She reads almost anything (and the piles of books in her house prove that) but her favorite genres are Southern fiction, women's fiction, and thrillers. Susan is a top 1% Goodreads Reviewer. You can connect with Susan on Facebook, Goodreads, or Twitter.

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