Blooming

Slumber parties, swimming pools, boyfriends, lakeside summers, family holidays -- Susan Allen Toth has captured it all in this delightful account of growing up in Ames, Iowa, in the 1950s. Charming, wise, funny, poignant, and true, BLOOMING celebrates an innocent and very American way of life. "Tender and finely textured . . . Mrs. Toth has re-created memories with a journalist's ear and a novelist's touch . . . . she has conveyed more clearly than anyone I've ever read before what it was like to be a girl in the 50s." -- The New York Times Book Review