Diane Thomas
The Year the Music Changed
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BOOKSTHE YEAR THE MUSIC CHANGED
[Click title to read an excerpt] “May engrave itself into the memories of more readers than To Kill a Mockingbird.” – Atlanta Journal-Constitution, September 4, 2005
A Book Sense *Notable Book* for September 2005. "Touching, funny and tender.... Highly recommended. - Library Journal **starred review. The Year the Music Changed has also been translated into Italian and Japanese. The world knew the late Achsa McEachern-Isaacs as a leading feminist playwright, wife of a prominent New York intellectual and mother of famed alt-country singer-songwriter Jesse Isaacs Sanchez. Yet in 1955, as shy, lonely 14-year-old Achsa McEachern, set apart by her superior intelligence and a disfiguring facial scar, she exchanged letters for a year with a young country singer on the way up -- whose name was Elvis Presley. Their "collected correspondence" is THE YEAR THE MUSIC CHANGED, starred by Library Journal and hailed by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's reviewer as "the most satisfying novel I've read in many years." Young Achsa finds solace in her radio, and when she hears Elvis's first recording on a "hillbilly" station, she writes him that he's singing "that new music, rock and roll," and that his record "should be played on every rock and roll radio station in the country." Thinking she's a deejay, Elvis writes back. When he learns she's a teenage girl so smart she's skipped two grades, he entreats her to teach him how to "talk good," so his grammar won't keep him from becoming "a great actor like James Dean." Shy at first, these two soon trust each other with their deepest hopes, dreams and fears, in a year when his star is rising faster than anyone can imagine and her family falls apart and, through great tragedy, she comes of age. Achsa, and their correspondence, are both fiction, but the events from Elvis's life are all historically accurate. Set in the twilight days of segregation, THE YEAR THE MUSIC CHANGED presents not only a glimpse into the grassroots history of rock and roll, but a snapshot of a nation on the brink of momentous change. IN THE CLEARING - a novel in progress
[Click title to read an excerpt.] Katherine lives in the forest to keep from dying. Danny lives there so he will not kill again. Pray they never meet. And if they do meet, pray they never fall in love. Nominated in an earlier draft, as The Clearing, for the Pushcart Press Editors Award. |
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