About This Book
Welcome to Baltimore, 1966, a quiet Eastern city of rowhouses, blue-collar neighborhoods, and burgeoning suburbs, where the future is about to arrive with shattering speed. Our narrator, Bobby Shine, has dropped out of his last year of law school to work as an intern at the local television station, perplexing his nurse fiancee, Annie Tilden. Her brother, the Fitzgerald-obsessed Neil, forgoes a chance to avoid being drafted into the Army as the war in Vietnam heats up, but later goes AWOL and returns to Baltimore to carry on his own eccentric antiwar protest. Ben Kallin, the coolest guy in their high school class, marries the Cadillac dealer's daughter to enter a reluctant life as the boss's son-in-law. Turko and Eggy, the Abbot and Costello of the group, can't quite shake their blue-collar mores as hippy girls, who have an easy acquaintance with drugs and sex, turn their world topsy-turvy. These young people will have to deal with as bewildering and wrenching a set of challenges as any American has ever faced, and none of them will leave 1966 less than profoundly changed. With the same affection, depth of insight, and glorious dialogue that made Diner an American classic, Barry Levinson now restores a poignant time and place in our lives. Sixty-Six proves him too be as accomplished a novelist as he is a screenwriter and director.
