Kennedy Girl
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
An uncontrollable series of events transform the lives of two teenagers the night of RFK's assassination. The unforgettable heroine of A Theory of Expanded Love returns in this coming-of-age adventure about love, justice and the memorable year of 1968.
Seventeen-year-old Annie Shea is feeling good about her life. Performing a solo in a glee club production of HAIR, she has a crush on the show's star, Lucas Jones, a talented black singer/dancer from Watts. Annie sneaks away from home to volunteer for Robert Kennedy, and proudly rides alongside his car as part of his campaign entourage.
On a hot June night inside the crowded ballroom of The Ambassador Hotel, Annie and Lucas witness the triumph of RFK's presidential campaign. Seconds later, RFK is shot, and the two follow his ambulance through the streets of LA-a tragic and chaotic ride that upends their young lives forever.
Soon after, Annie ditches her first day of university to drive Lucas and her brother to Canada to evade the law. Throughout the suspense of their hasty road trip up the coast of California, Annie unearths her brother's unbearable secrets. She connects with Lucas's generous heart while sorting out justice and privilege, racism, sexuality, love, and the dark forces of war.
In the sequel to the award-winning A Theory of Expanded Love, Annie is determined to find her voice. Thrust into making excruciating decisions, Annie begins to understand the new roles she must navigate as a woman in a fast-changing society, amidst the chaos, danger and social change of the late Sixties.
Customer Reviews
What can go wrong?
Review: Kennedy Girl by Caitlin Hicks
I read Kennedy Girl in June 2023 along with it’s precursor, A Theory of Expanded Love. My work suffered, the laundry languished as I devoured these wonderful books.
The two novels follow the transformation of Annie Shea from a gawky twelve year old, desperate to make her mark as # 6 in a Catholic family of thirteen children (fourteen by the novel’s end), into an unstoppable seventeen year old as Kennedy Girl, the sequel of A Theory of Expanded Love, opens in Pasadena California in 1968.
Kennedy Girl:
1968. What a year to be seventeen. Hair is opening on Broadway. Bobby Kennedy is campaigning to run for President on a social reform platform. The assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King have unsettled America’s self image for many people, including Annie Shea.
Annie is cast in a musical revue of songs from Hair, directed by lecherous Father Sullivan and starring Lucas, a charismatic black dancer from a Catholic School in Watts. Annie’s older sister, the rebellious Madcap, is dating a Jew against her parents wishes. Annie’s older brothers are enlisting to fight in Vietnam with the enthusiastic support of their father, a former Commander in the US Navy. What can go wrong when Annie sneaks out of the house to join Madcap and Lucas in working on Bobby Kennedy’s campaign?
Kennedy Girl hits all the high points of that idealistic, troubled and iconoclastic year. Feminism, abuse of power, assassination, racism, war, loyalty and duty—these themes effortlessly unfold in this believable multi-layered narrative.
Caitlin Hicks has come to these novels following a distinguished career as a Canadian playwright, performer, and screen-writer. She has toured internationally in one woman monologue productions. This lived experience as a performer of what she writes has guided the dialogue, diary entries, and self-examination of Annie as she navigates the transition from teen to young woman, from the structured safety of home to the wider world.
I loved both books, I hope you will too.