Books Set in the 1970s
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A Nostalgic Look at the 1970s: The Decade of Disco, Denim, and Daring Change
The 1970s were a time of bold choices—whether in fashion, music, or social movements. It was a decade where people embraced individuality and self-expression, making it one of the most colorful and dynamic periods in modern history. Let’s take a trip back in time to relive some of the iconic elements that defined the ‘70s.
1. The Rise of Disco and Funk
Few musical genres embody the spirit of the 1970s like disco. Clubs like Studio 54 in New York City became legendary, not just for the celebrities who danced the night away but for the flamboyant energy of the scene. With hits like “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees and “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor, disco turned dance floors into euphoric celebrations of life. Funk, with artists like James Brown, Parliament-Funkadelic, and Sly and the Family Stone, brought powerful beats and a groove that influenced generations.
2. Bell-Bottoms and Platform Shoes
If there’s one fashion item synonymous with the ‘70s, it’s bell-bottom jeans. These flared pants were a staple in wardrobes, often paired with colorful, flowing shirts and the ever-present platform shoes. Men and women alike embraced bold prints, from paisley to psychedelic swirls, and denim became the fabric of the decade, worn in everything from jumpsuits to jackets.
3. Saturday Morning Cartoons
The ‘70s were a golden era for Saturday morning cartoons. Shows like Scooby-Doo, Super Friends, and The Pink Panther kept kids glued to the television, eager for their weekly dose of animated adventures. This was the decade when animation studios created characters that remain beloved to this day, fueling hours of imaginative play.
4. Blockbuster Movies and The Dawn of Modern Filmmaking
The 1970s also saw the birth of the summer blockbuster, starting with Jaws (1975) and followed by Star Wars (1977), which forever changed how movies were made and marketed. Directors like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas became household names. The Godfather (1972), Rocky (1976), and Grease (1978) helped define the era’s cinematic landscape, offering everything from mafia drama to feel-good musicals.
5. Women’s Rights and Social Change
The 1970s marked a pivotal time in the women’s rights movement. Title IX was passed in 1972, allowing greater opportunities for women in education and sports. The decade saw the rise of Second-Wave Feminism, with activists like Gloria Steinem and organizations like the National Organization for Women (NOW) pushing for equality. The struggle for reproductive rights came to the forefront with the landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.
6. Atari and the Birth of Video Games
While modern gaming consoles weren’t yet on the market, the ‘70s marked the beginning of the video game revolution with the release of Pong in 1972. Atari helped bring arcade games into homes, and by the end of the decade, video games were becoming a mainstay of pop culture, paving the way for the technological innovations of the ‘80s.
7. TV Families and Variety Shows
Television in the 1970s was all about variety shows and family sitcoms. The Brady Bunch, Happy Days, and The Partridge Family brought wholesome family fun into living rooms. Variety shows like The Carol Burnett Show and Sonny & Cher kept viewers entertained with comedy sketches, musical performances, and celebrity guests, making TV one of the decade's favorite pastimes.
8. Environmental Movement and the Birth of Earth Day
The 1970s also saw the rise of environmental consciousness. Concerns over pollution and industrial waste led to the first Earth Day in 1970, a day now celebrated globally to promote environmental protection. The Clean Air Act and Endangered Species Act were both passed in the ‘70s, highlighting a growing concern for the planet's future.
9. Sports Legends and Iconic Moments
The ‘70s gave rise to some of the most iconic figures in sports history. Muhammad Ali reigned as boxing’s greatest, while tennis stars like Billie Jean King fought for gender equality on and off the court. The decade also gave us the legendary Pittsburgh Steelers football dynasty and the dominance of the Oakland A’s in baseball.
10. The Legacy of the 1970s
The 1970s were a period of experimentation and freedom, where people felt empowered to challenge norms and make their voices heard. From music and fashion to technology and social movements, the decade set the stage for modern pop culture and many of the rights and freedoms we enjoy today. The colorful patterns and bold statements of the era remain an enduring symbol of a decade that dared to be different.
Books Set in the 1970s
The Pink Dress: A Memoir of a Reluctant Beauty Queen
Author Interview with Jane Little Botkin
For fans of Little Miss Sunshine and Secrets of Miss America, this memoir from a national award-winning author reveals the reality of being the first Guyrex Girl in the 1970s. Beauty pageant stories have never been this raw, this real.
Growing up in West Texas, Jane Little Botkin didn’t have designs on becoming a beauty queen. But not long after joining a pageant on a whim in college, she became the first protégé of El Paso’s Richard Guy and Rex Holt, known as the “Kings of Beauty”—just as the 1970’s counterculture movement began to take off.
A pink, rose-covered gown—a Guyrex creation—symbolizes the fairy tale life that young women in Jane’s time imagined beauty queens had. Its near destruction exposes reality: the author’s failed relationship with her mother, and her parents’ failed relationship with one another. Weaving these narrative threads together is the Wild West notion that anything is possible, especially do-overs.
The Pink Dress awakens nostalgia for the 1960s and 1970s, the era’s conflicts and growth pains. A common expectation that women went to college to get “MRS” degrees—to find a husband and become a stay-at-home wife and mother—often prevailed. How does one swim upstream against this notion among feminist voices that protest “If You Want Meat, Go to a Butcher!” at beauty pageants, two flamboyant showmen, and a developing awareness of self? Torn between women’s traditional roles and what women could be, Guyrex Girls evolved, as did the author.
We Love the Nightlife by Rachel Koller Croft
WE LOVE THE NIGHTLIFE delves into the dark and chic underworld of 1970s London. Step into a realm where shadows dance and secrets lurk, as readers follow Nicola and Amber, two party girls with a deep love for disco. After meeting one fateful night on the dancefloor, their lives are forever changed. What comes next is an infernal dance of insatiable appetites, toxic friendships, and eternal youth. You won’t want the party to stop!
The Disappeared by Rebecca Sanford
Inspired by the real mothers and grandmothers who spoke out against Argentina’s military dictatorship, The Disappeared is an award-winning debut about identity, family secrets, and those who endured decades of hardship to expose the truth.
In 1976 Buenos Aires, Lorena Ledesma is a housewife with dangerous secrets living under Argentina’s rising military dictatorship. When she and her husband are torn from their home by the paramilitary in the middle of the night, their two-year-old son is left behind with Lorena’s mother, Esme. There’s never any record of the arrest. Desperate to locate Lorena, Esme joins an underground group of mothers who are investigating the disappearances of their own missing children. But when they make a devastating discovery—that several of their kidnapped daughters have given birth in prison—a new kind of pursuit begins: the search for their stolen grandchildren.
Nearly three decades later, thousands of miles away, American adoptee Rachel Sprague learns she has a biological brother from another country—somewhere she has never visited. But the truth goes far deeper than the results of a DNA test, and revealing her origins will expose painful family secrets that could put Rachel’s loved ones in jeopardy.
A heart-wrenching drama that spans thirty years, The Disappeared is inspired by the true stories of the mothers and grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, an extraordinary group of women who, for more than forty-five years, have been searching for children of the “disappeared”—those captured as dissidents during Argentina’s Dirty War.
Summer Heat by Defne Suman
Melike has it all: a beautiful home in Istanbul, a career as an art historian, an attentive husband. But her yearning for more excitement has led her surreptitiously into the arms of other men.
On the cusp of her fortieth birthday, Melike is resolute: the affairs must stop. Then she receives a mysterious email from a man named Petro, requesting a tour of Istanbul's Byzantine churches. Against her better judgement, she accepts.
As soon as she sees Petro, with his endearing smile and impeccable charm, Melike knows she is in trouble. But she is not the only one keeping secrets. Petro has a hidden agenda of his own – one which, when uncovered, will not only upend Melike's future, but alter everything she believed about her past...
Set alternately between 2003 and 1974, during the Turkish Army's invasion of Cyprus, Defne Suman's third novel to be translated into English tells of one woman's place in her country's devastating history.
Sunday Money by Maggie Hill
It's 1971, but for Claire Joyce and girls’ basketball, it might as well be 1871. Stilted rules (three-bounce dribbling, two roving players for full-court games, and uniforms that include bloomers) set their play unfairly apart from the boys’ basketball Claire’s older brother John has trained her in.
Basketball is the only constant in Claire life, and as she enters her teen years the skills she’s cultivated on the court—passing, shooting, and faking—help her guard against the chaos of an alcoholic mother, an increasingly violent younger brother, and the downward spiral her beloved John soon finds himself unable to climb out of. Deeply cut from the cloth of the Catholic Church, Brooklyn’s working class, and the limited expectations her world has for girls, Claire strives to find a mirror that might reflect a different, future self. Then Title IX bounces on the scene. Suddenly, girls’ basketball becomes explosive, musical, passionate, and driven—and if Claire plays it just right, it just might offer a full ride to a previously out-of-reach college.
Sunday Money follows Claire as she narrates her way through 1970s Brooklyn, hustling on and off the court and striving to break free of the turmoil in her home and the rulebook “good” girls are supposed to follow.
No More Empty Spaces: A Novel by D.J. Green
It’s 1973 and Will Ross, a divorced American geologist, has signed on to work on a troubled dam in a remote, rugged part of Turkey. Due to his ex-wife's advancing alcoholism, he takes his children to Turkey for their usual two-week stint of shared custody. He doesn't share that he has no plans to send them home. Alongside these emotional conflicts, he, his children, and everyone else involved in the dam face powerful external forces, including landslides and earthquakes. Science can help them understand those forces and engineering can help control them, but each character gradually comes to realize that the landscape they stand upon, and the landscapes of their lives, will shift and shake regardless of the choices they make. The question, then, is: how will they respond?
Aftershock by Zhang Ling
A catastrophic disaster in China triggers a mother’s heartbreaking choice and a daughter’s reconciliation with the past in this engrossing novel by the author of A Single Swallow and Where Waters Meet. Perfect for fans of Amy Tan, Lisa See, and Min Jin Lee.
In the summer of 1976, an earthquake swallows up the city of Tangshan, China. Among the hundreds of thousands of people scrambling for survival is a mother who makes an agonizing decision that irrevocably changes her life and the lives of her children. In that devastating split second, her seven-year-old daughter, Xiaodeng, is separated from her brother and the mother she loves and trusts. All Xiaodeng remembers of the fateful morning is betrayal.
Thirty years later, Xiaodeng is an acclaimed writer living in Canada with a caring husband and daughter. However, her newfound fame and success do little to cover the deep wounds that disrupt her life, time and again, and edge her toward a breaking point. Xiaodeng realizes the only path toward healing is to return to Tangshan, find her mother, and get closure.
The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard by Natasha Lester
Author Interview with Natasha Lester
"Vogue meets Daisy Jones & the Six," says New York Times bestseller Kate Quinn, in this bold novel of feminism and fashion set in 1970s New York City and the historic designers’ showdown in Versailles.
Everyone remembers her daringly short, silver lamé dress. It was iconic photo capturing an electric moment, where emerging American designer Astrid Bricard is young, uninhibited, and on the cusp of fashion and feminism’s changing landscape. She and fellow designer Hawk Jones are all over Vogue magazine and New York City's disco scene. Yet she can't escape the shadow of her mother, Mizza Bricard, infamous "muse" for Christian Dior. Astrid would give anything to take her place among the great houses of couture–on her own terms. I won’t inspire it when I can create it.
But then Astrid disappeared…
Now Astrid's daughter, Blythe, holds what remains of her mother and grandmother's legacies. Of all the Bricard women, she can gather the torn, painfully beautiful fabrics of three generations of heartbreak to create something that will shake the foundations of fashion. The only piece missing is the one question no one's been able to answer: What really happened to Astrid?
Aednan by Linnea Axelsson
The winner of Sweden’s most prestigious literary award makes her American debut with an epic, multigenerational novel-in-verse about two Sámi families and their quest to stay together across a century of migration, violence, and colonial trauma.
In Northern Sámi, the word Ædnan means the land, the earth, and my mother. These are all crucial forces within the lives of the Indigenous families that animate this groundbreaking book: an astonishing verse novel that chronicles a hundred years of change: a book that will one day stand alongside Halldór Laxness’s Independent People and Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter as an essential Scandinavian epic.
The tale begins in the 1910s, as Ristin and her family migrate their herd of reindeer to summer grounds. Along the way, forced to separate due to the newly formed border between Sweden and Norway, Ristin loses one of her sons in the aftermath of an accident, a grief that will ripple across the rest of the book. In the wake of this tragedy, Ristin struggles to manage what’s left of her family and her community.
In the 1970s, Lise, as part of a new generation of Sámi grappling with questions of identity and inheritance, reflects on her traumatic childhood, when she was forced to leave her parents and was placed in a Nomad School to be stripped of the language of her ancestors. Finally, in the 2010s we meet Lise’s daughter, Sandra, an embodiment of Indigenous resilience, an activist fighting for reparations in a highly publicized land rights trial, in a time when the Sámi language is all but lost.
Weaving together the voices of half a dozen characters, from elders to young people unsure of their heritage, Axelsson has created a moving family saga around the consequences of colonial settlement. Ædnan is a powerful reminder of how durable language can be, even when it is borrowed, especially when it has to hold what no longer remains. “I was the weight / in the stone you brought / back from the coast // to place on / my grave,” one character says to another from beyond the grave. “And I flew above / the boat calling / to you all: // There will be rain / there will be rain.”
The Time Keepers by Alyson Richman
Author Interview with Alyson Richman
An unforgettable novel that captures the power of longing, loss, and love, The Time Keepers transports us from 1979 suburban New York to war-torn Vietnam, revealing that sometimes the most unexpected friendships can save us.
Two women from different worlds, Grace and Anh, are indelibly changed when a runaway boy is found on a street in their small Long Island town. Brought together by the love of this child displaced by war, the women find friendship and healing from their own painful pasts when their lives intersect with a mysterious wounded Vietnam vet. The vet, Jack, works at the Golden Hours, a watch store that mends timepieces—and might even mend damaged souls.
Richman interweaves the journeys of these wonderfully diverse characters who will grip, fill, and break your heart—only to bring them together with the care and precision of an expert watchmaker, one piece at a time. Inspired by the true story of a Vietnamese refugee who entrusted the dramatic account of her escape from Vietnam to the author, and also that of a wounded veteran, Richman sheds light on those whose lives were forever impacted by the devastation of that war.
What Was Lost by Melissa Connelly
Reminiscent of Hello Beautiful and The Lying Life of Adults, this powerful narrative delves into social changes from 1970 to 2000 and captures a woman’s journey in a pre-#MeToo era via the tale of a mother who returns to her hometown to face the perpetrator of her childhood abuse.
When a young girl feels complicit in her own abuse, how does that thwart her attempts to build a happy life as an adult woman?
When disturbing memories begin to surface, Marti returns to the small Vermont town she ran away from thirty years ago to face her demons. She drags her unwitting teenage daughter along on the journey—heightening already existing tension between mother and daughter. But Marti is determined to achieve what she’s returned home for: forgiveness for lies told, and revenge for secrets held.
Exploring the vast social changes that took place between 1970 and 2000 and turning a critical eye on times before language such as #MeToo helped give voice to these all-too-common occurrences, What Was Lost is a raw, powerful tale of one woman confronting the ghosts of her past.
A Glooming Peace This Morning by Allen Mendenhall
Author Interview with Allen Mendenhall
Set in the heart of the 1970s and in the fictional Southern town of Andalusia, "A Glooming Peace this Morning" unveils the unforgettable story of Tommy Cox, a young man with an intellectual disability, and Sarah Warren, the charming belle of high society. Their fateful encounter is anything but ordinary: a mysterious illness draws them together, sparking an illicit romance that will set an entire town ablaze. As their love flourishes in the shadows, a heated trial ensues, forcing the community to confront its prejudices and biases. At its core, the case hinges on one critical question: could Tommy have formed the intent required by law to be found guilty of the charges against him? In the midst of this legal battle, Cephas, the narrator recalling these childhood events, and his friends—Lump, Brett, and Michael—are faced with the daunting task of reconciling their knowledge of Tommy and Sarah's intimate relationship with their own beliefs about justice, truth, lust, and love. Only a few know what really happened–but the truth can never truly be buried.
Turn It Up! My Time Making Hit Records In The Glory Days of Rock Music by Tom Werman
Growing up in the Boston suburbs, Tom Werman was deeply affected by pop music from a young age. He long dreamed of a career in music—first as Elvis, then as the next George Harrison—but it almost didn’t turn out that way. Dutifully following the path his parents had laid out for him, he obtained an MBA from an Ivy League university and took a plum job in an industry he came to despise. Then, in 1970, a chance letter sent to CBS Records boss Clive Davis led to a new opportunity . . . and a place in rock’n’roll history.
As an A&R man at Epic Records, Werman helped introduce the world to REO Speedwagon, Boston, Ted Nugent, and Cheap Trick; he also discovered KISS, Rush, and Lynyrd Skynyrd, but his record label passed on all of them. Then, as an independent producer, he oversaw landmark albums by Mötley Crüe (Shout At The Devil), Twisted Sister (Stay Hungry), Lita Ford (Dangerous Curves), Jeff Beck (Live With Jan Hammer), Poison (Open Up And Say … Ahh!), and many more. All in all, his record-making résumé includes twenty-three gold- or platinum-selling albums and cumulative sales of more than fifty-two million copies.
After bearing witness to several sea changes in the music industry, Werman retired from producing in 2001 and reinvented himself as an award-winning innkeeper in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts. And that might have been that—until an off-the-cuff rebuttal to a disparaging critique of his role in making the Mötley Crüe album Girls, Girls, Girls on a music website led to a fortnightly column and now this book—an honest and engaging insider account on how some of the best-loved albums of the 1970s and 80s came to be. A must for anyone interested in the glory days of rock and metal, Turn It Up! offers valuable insights into the recording process, the recording studio, the role of the producer, and the production values that are essential to the creation of a hit record.
What Wild Women Do by Karma Brown
A 1970s feminist facing the costs of loss and autonomy strives to create a better future for women at her Adirondacks camp; meanwhile, an aspiring screenwriter of today, makes a shocking discovery that sets her on a course of rewriting her own story.
Rowan is stuck. Her dreams of becoming a screenwriter are stalled, along with her bank account, as she and her fiancé, Seth, try to make sense of what’s next for them after leaving LA. But when the couple takes a trip to a cabin in the Adirondacks, hoping the change will provide inspiration for Seth’s novel-in-progress, Rowan finds herself drawn into a story greater than her own—that of socialite-turned-feminist-crusader Eddie Calloway, who vanished one day in 1975 and was never found or heard from again. In a handbook left behind in the abandoned ruins of a once-great camp, Rowan learns more about the enigmatic Eddie, and clues as to what happened to her.
As Rowan delves deeper into the mystery, we meet Eddie herself, a fierce and loving woman whose greatest wish was to host women at her camp and unlock their “wildness.” However, Eddie’s wild ways aren’t welcomed by everyone, and rifts between camp owners threaten her mission. When Rowan gets closer to the truth of Eddie’s disappearance, she realizes that it may hold the key to unlocking her own ambition and future.
Half a Cup of Sand and Sky by Nadine Bjursten
Author Interview with Nadine Bjursten
Resonating with tenderness, HALF A CUP OF SKY is a moving portrait of one woman’s search for love and belonging cast against a nuanced backdrop of political turmoil.
It is 1977, and the anti-shah protests at Tehran University are intensifying, but Amineh is not like her fellow students who want a say in the future of their country. Her thoughts are on the beautiful literature of another era and her past of rose harvests and Sufi poetry evenings under the desert sky. A chance encounter with Farzad, a disarmament activist, will thrust her into a life she didn’t ask for and didn’t want. Nobody wanted the tyranny that is quickly turning worse than the tyranny it replaced. But maybe Amineh has been looking at her life all wrong—Maybe the thing she is seeking is not in the past at all.
The House on Sun Street by Mojgan Ghazirad
Author Interview with Mojgan Ghazirad
A young girl grows up in a family uprooted by the terror of an Islamic Revolution, where her culture, her gender, and her education are in peril.
For the curious and imaginative Moji, there is no better place to grow up than the lush garden of her grandparents in Tehran. However, as she sits with her sister underneath the grapevines, listening to their grandfather recount the enchanting stories of One Thousand and One Nights, revolution is brewing in her homeland. Soon, the last monarch of Iran will leave the country, and her home and her family will never be the same.
From Moji’s house on Sun Street, readers experience the 1979 Iranian revolution through the eyes of a young girl and her family members during a time of concussive political and social change. Moji must endure the harrowing first days of the violent revolution, a fraught passage to the US where there is only hostility from her classmates during the Iranian hostage crisis, her father’s detainment by the Islamic Revolutionary Army, and finally, the massive change in the status of women in post-revolution Iran.
Along with these seismic shifts, for Moji, there are also the universal perils of love, sexuality, and adolescence. However, since Moji’s school is centered on political indoctrination, even a young girl’s innocent crush can mean catastrophe. Is Moji able to pull through? Will her family come to her rescue? And just like Scheherazade, will the power of stories help her prevail?
All You Have To Do Is Call by Kerri Maher
Author Interview with Kerri Maher
A dramatic and inspiring novel based on the true story of the Jane Collective and the brave women who fought for our right to choose, from the USA Today bestselling author of The Paris Bookseller.
Chicago, early 1970s: Who does a woman call when she needs help? Jane.
The best-known secret in the city, Jane is an underground women’s health organization composed entirely of women helping women, empowering them to live lives free from the expectations of society by offering reproductive counseling and safe, illegal abortions. Veronica, Jane’s founder, prides herself on the services she has provided to thousands of women, yet the price of others’ freedom is that she leads a double life. When she’s not at Jane, Veronica plays the role of a conventional housewife—which becomes even more difficult during her own high-risk pregnancy.
Two more women in Veronica’s neighborhood are grappling with similar disconnects. Margaret, a young professor at the University of Chicago, secretly volunteers at Jane as she falls in love with a man whose attitude toward his ex-wife increasingly disturbs her. Patty, who’s long been content as a devoted wife and mother, has begun to sense that something essential is missing from her life. When her runaway younger sister Eliza shows up unexpectedly, Patty is forced to come to terms with what it really means to love and support a sister.
In this historic moment when the personal was nothing if not political, when television, movies, and commercials told women they’d “come a long way, baby,” Veronica, Margaret, and Patty must make choices that will change the course of their lives forever.
Las Madres by Esmeralda Santiago
From the award-winning, best-selling author of When I Was Puerto Rican, a powerful novel of family, race, faith, sex, and disaster that moves between Puerto Rico and the Bronx, revealing the lives and loves of five women and the secret that binds them together
They refer to themselves as “las Madres,” a close-knit group of women who, with their daughters, have created a family based on friendship and blood ties.Their story begins in Puerto Rico in 1975 when fifteen-year-old Luz, the tallest girl in her dance academy and the only Black one in a sea of petite, light-skinned, delicate swans, is seriously injured in a car accident. Tragically, her brilliant, multilingual scientist parents are both killed in the crash. Now orphaned, Luz navigates the pressures of adolescence and copes with the aftershock of a brain injury, when two new friends enter her life, Ada and Shirley. Luz’s days are consumed with aches and pains, and her memory of the accident is wiped clean, but she suffers spells that send her mind to times and places she can’t share with others.
In 2017, in the Bronx, Luz’s adult daughter, Marysol, wishes she better understood her. But how can she when her mother barely remembers her own life? To help, Ada and Shirley’s daughter, Graciela, suggests a vacation in Puerto Rico for the extended group, as an opportunity for Luz to unearth long-buried memories and for Marysol to learn more about her mother’s early life. But despite all their careful planning, two hurricanes, back-to-back, disrupt their homecoming, and a secret is revealed that blows their lives wide open. In a voice that sings with warmth, humor, friendship, and pride, celebrated author Esmeralda Santiago unspools a story of women’s sexuality, shame, disability, and love within a community rocked by disaster.
Walking on Fire by Kathryn Crawley
Greece. Politics. Love. Danger. Reeling from a failed marriage and spurred on by a burgeoning sense of feminism, twenty-five-year-old Kate accepts a position as a speech therapist in a center for children with cerebral palsy in Thessaloniki, Greece. It is 1974, and the recent end of Greece’s seven-year dictatorship has ignited a fiery anti-American sentiment within the country. Despite this, as her Greek improves, Kate teaches communication to severely disabled children, creates profound friendships, and finds a home in the ancient and historied city. From a dramatic Christmas pig slaughter to a mesmerizing fire walking ceremony, her world expands rapidly—even more so when she falls in love with Thanasis, a handsome Communist.
Through Thanasis, Kate meets people determined to turn a spotlight on their former dictators’ massacre of university students, as well as their record of widespread censorship and torture of dissidents. The more she learns, the more her loyalty to her country and almost everything she was taught in her conservative home state of Texas is challenged. Kate is transformed by her odyssey, but when her very safety is threatened by the politics of her lover, she must choose: risk everything to stay with Thanasis and the Greece that has captured her heart, or remove herself from harm’s way by returning to her homeland?
The Marriage Box by Corie Adjmi
Author Interview with Corie Adjmi
Casey Cohen, a Middle Eastern Jew, is a sixteen-year-old in New Orleans in the 1970s when she starts hanging out with the wrong crowd. Then she gets in trouble—and her parents turn her whole world upside down by deciding to return to their roots, the Orthodox Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn.
In this new and foreign world, men pray daily, thanking God they’re not women; parties are extravagant events at the Museum of Natural History; and the Marriage Box is a real place, a pool deck designated for teenage girls to put themselves on display for potential husbands. Casey is at first appalled by this unfamiliar culture, but after she meets Michael, she’s enticed by it. Looking for love and a place to belong, she marries him at eighteen, believing she can adjust to Syrian ways. But she begins to question her decision when she discovers that Michael doesn’t want her to go to college—he wants her to have a baby instead.
Promenade of Desire by Isidra Mencos
María Isidra is a proper Catholic girl raised in 1960s Spain by a strong matriarch during a repressive dictatorship. Early sexual trauma and a hefty dose of fear keep her in line for much of her childhood, but also lead her to live a double life. In her home, there is no discussing the needs of her growing body. In the street, kissing in public is forbidden.
Upon the dictator’s death in 1975, Spain bursts wide open, giving way to democracy and a cultural revolution. Barcelona’s vibrant downtown and its new freedoms seduce María Isidra. She dives into a world of activism, communal living, literature, counterculture, open sexuality, and alcohol.
And yet she knows something is missing. Longing to reconnect with her body—from which she has felt estranged since childhood—she finds a surprising home in a rundown salsa club, where the lush rhythm sparks a deep wave of healing. Transformed, she sets off on a series of sexual and romantic misadventures, in search for what she has always found painfully elusive: true intimacy.
Making the Rounds by Patricia Grayhall
In her debut memoir, Making the Rounds: Defying Norms in Love and Medicine (She Writes Press, October 11, 2022, $17.95 Paperback), medical doctor and writer Patricia Grayhall shares her story of coming-of-age in the 1970s' as a young woman striving to have both love and a career as a lesbian as well as a medical doctor when neither was approved of by society at that time. It's a moving and well-paced account of what it means to seek belonging and love...and to find them in the most surprising ways.
The Prince of Steel Pier by Stacy Nockowitz
Poor 13-year-old Joey Goodman is not suited for 1975 Atlantic City: he’s anxious, fearful, and prone to puking at any moment. On top of it all, his tight-knit Jewish family babies him more than they do his younger brother! With wanting to prove his mettle top of mind, Joey ends up working for kingpin Artie Bishop, whose gangsters are impressed by how Joey handles thieves who steal his prize tickets. Joey suddenly feels important as he runs around with Artie and his crew – but after a streak of deceiving his loved ones and dangerous jobs that put his family at risk, Joey’s resolve will be put to the test. This adventure-filled middle grade will have young readers relating to Joey as he goes through his fair share of feelings (like a crush!), goons, and finding that his place was with his real family all along. A great pick for those who loved All of Me by Chris Baron and Al Capone Throws Me a Curve by Gennifer Choldenko.
Tell Us No Secrets by Siena Sterling
TELL US NO SECRETS, Siena Sterling's stunning debut thriller, is set in a girls’ boarding school in New England, circa 1970. This page-turning thriller is perfect for fans of Lucy Foley, Simone St James, and Riley Sager. Both a propulsive thriller and an unsettling examination of female friendship, TELL US NO SECRETS casts a powerful light on jealousy, the terrible pain of betrayal, and the tragic consequences of peer pressure running riot.
Our Laundry, Our Town: My Chinese American Life from Flushing to the Downtown Stage and Beyond by Alvin Eng
Author Interview with Alvin Eng
From behind the counter of his parents' laundry and a household rooted in a different century and culture to the turbulent, exciting streets of 1970s New York City, playwright, performer, acoustic punk rock raconteur, and educator Alvin Eng delivers an illuminating time capsule of the Chinese-American experience in his new memoir, OUR LAUNDRY, OUR TOWN. Fans of memoirs that speak to the immigrant experience – such as Beautiful Country and Sigh, Gone – and the gritty Downtown scene – such as Just Kids and Vanishing New York – will delight in Eng’s story of finding voice, identity, and community through the transformative power of Asian American arts, activism, punk rock and theater.
American Blues by Polly Hamilton Hilsabeck
Also listed in Books Set in the 1990s
This coming spring, introduce your audience to a powerful new novel about racism and sexism in America. Perfect for book club discussions, American Blues by Polly Hamilton Hilsabeck spans from the early 1970s through the 1990s and opens with a trailblazing female Episcopal seminarian who confronts white brutality and her own feelings on race, when she accompanies her boss—Episcopal Church Executive Officer—to South Carolina in the immediate aftermath of Black church sexton Sam Jefferson’s lynching.
Returning home to Manhattan, race awareness continues to grow as Lily Vida Wallace proceeds with her theological studies, then ordination at St. Philip’s Harlem after the historic 1976 Episcopal Church vote to “regularize” women’s ordination to the priesthood.
Two decades later, Lily—now married with children and serving Holy Innocents in Oakland, California—officiates for high-profile interracial nuptials drawing national headlines, as well as the fiery journalist she met in South Carolina in the wake of Sam Jefferson’s lynching. Leaving Oakland, Lucius Clay’s LA Times assignment is to cover Black church burnings starting with Lily’s hometown in Texas. This richly drawn American story will echo and challenge readers’ own assumptions about race and gender in American society as they follow Lily’s story.
The Music Stalker by Bruce J. Berger
Kayla Covo is a piano prodigy. In mid-1970’s New York City, she vaults to fame, holding audiences in awe with her renditions of Beethoven and Chopin and winning their hearts forever with a smile. But deep within lie the seeds of her destruction, the genes leading to paranoid fear of being stalked by a murderous fan. Supported yet oppressed by her devoted brother Max, Kayla struggles to find the right path. The Music Stalker closely examines how genius and love might survive in a close-knit family torn by trauma, insanity, and jealousy.
The World Played Chess by Robert Dugoni
Author Interview with Robert Dugoni
In 1979, Vincent Bianco has just graduated high school. His only desire: collect a little beer money and enjoy his final summer before college. So he lands a job as a laborer on a construction crew. Working alongside two Vietnam vets, one suffering from PTSD, Vincent gets the education of a lifetime. Now forty years later, with his own son leaving for college, the lessons of that summer—Vincent’s last taste of innocence and first taste of real life—dramatically unfold in a novel about breaking away, shaping a life, and seeking one’s own destiny.
The Liability of Love by Susan Schoenberger
For those who enjoyed The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer and The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett, The Liabilities of Love is an ambitious and masterful portrayal of the complex journey of how trauma can reverberate throughout a woman’s life, the differing perspectives people have on intimacy and the unintended consequences and risks of falling in love. Following the death of her beloved mother, Margaret Carlyle heads to a local college in 1979 hoping to find love and acceptance in this new setting. Assaulted on her first date by a charismatic peer Anders, she wants nothing more than to forget it ever happened. But as the years pass, each life decision she makes seems driven by what happened that night until she realizes she must face her past head-on.
Lemons in the Garden of Love by Ames Sheldon
Author Interview with Ames Sheldon
It’s 1977 and Cassie Lyman, a graduate student in women’s history, is struggling to find a topic for her doctoral dissertation. When she discovers a trove of drawings, suffrage cartoons, letters, and diaries at Smith College belonging to Kate Easton, founder of the Birth Control League of Massachusetts in 1916, she believes she has located her subject. Digging deeper into Kate’s life, Cassie learns that she and Kate are related―closely. Driven to understand why her family has never spoken of Kate, Cassie travels to Cape Ann to attend her sister’s shotgun wedding, where she questions her female relatives about Kate―only to find herself soon afterward in the same challenging situation Kate faced.
Attachments by Jeff Arch
Also listed in Books Set in the 1990s
A dual timeline narrative set during the 1990s with flashbacks to 1972, Attachments follows Stewart “Goody” Goodman and Sandy “Pick” Piccolo, who as adults receive a deathbed request from the dean at the Pennsylvania boarding school they attended decades earlier where they fell for the same girl, Laura. As they both make their way back to the campus of their youth, secrets and betrayals from the past come into the light that could have dire consequences for the dean’s young son. Fans of ensemble casts and family drama such as Ann Patchett’s Commonwealth told through carefully revealed flashbacks similar to This is Us will devour Attachments.
1970s Fashion: A Decade of Bold Statements and Free Expression
The fashion of the 1970s was as dynamic and diverse as the cultural movements shaping the world. It was a decade where self-expression ruled, and style became a reflection of personal identity, social change, and the bold spirit of the era. Let’s take a look at some of the defining trends that made the ‘70s a truly unforgettable fashion moment.
1. Bell-Bottoms and Flared Pants
One of the most iconic pieces of 1970s fashion was the bell-bottom, a style of pants that flared dramatically from the knee down. Worn by both men and women, they became synonymous with the free-spirited, rebellious attitude of the decade. Often made of denim, these pants were paired with colorful tops, flowy blouses, and platform shoes.
2. Platform Shoes
Platform shoes were a defining accessory of the 1970s, adding height and drama to almost any outfit. These shoes, with their thick soles and chunky heels, came in a wide variety of styles and colors, ranging from glam rock to disco chic. They were frequently paired with bell-bottoms, making for a quintessential ‘70s look.
3. Bohemian and Hippie Influence
The bohemian or hippie look carried over from the late 1960s into the early ‘70s, bringing with it a sense of relaxed, natural style. Flowing maxi dresses, peasant blouses, and embroidered tunics were staples, often adorned with fringe, beads, and ethnic patterns. Natural fabrics like cotton and suede were popular, emphasizing a connection to nature and a carefree lifestyle.
4. Disco Glam
With the rise of disco in the mid-to-late ‘70s, fashion took a turn toward the bold and flashy. People embraced glamorous, body-hugging outfits for nights out on the dance floor. Sequins, metallic fabrics, and jumpsuits became the go-to attire for clubs like Studio 54. Men and women alike wore shiny, form-fitting clothing, with plunging necklines and daring cuts.
5. The Leisure Suit
For men, the leisure suit became a popular trend, especially in casual settings. Made of polyester and featuring wide lapels and flared pants, these suits were often worn in bright colors or pastel shades. The leisure suit became synonymous with 1970s style, particularly among men who wanted to embrace the decade’s laid-back vibe while still looking put together.
6. Ethnic and Global Influences
The 1970s saw a growing interest in fashion inspired by global cultures. From Indian tunics and caftans to African prints and Native American motifs, designers embraced a wide variety of cultural influences. This blending of styles reflected a desire for more inclusive and globalized fashion, breaking away from Western-centric trends.
7. Punk Rock Rebellion
By the late 1970s, a countercultural movement emerged that rejected the glamour of disco and the laid-back hippie vibe. Punk fashion, pioneered by designers like Vivienne Westwood in the UK, featured ripped clothing, safety pins, and leather jackets. It was a direct rebellion against mainstream trends, emphasizing DIY ethos, aggression, and non-conformity.
8. Colors and Patterns
The ‘70s were known for their love of bold colors and eye-catching patterns. Earth tones like brown, orange, and mustard yellow were common, often paired with vibrant shades of purple, green, and red. Geometric prints, psychedelic swirls, and floral designs were frequently seen on everything from dresses to home decor, creating a lively, energetic atmosphere.
9. Denim Domination
Denim was a staple of 1970s fashion, appearing in a variety of forms beyond just jeans. Denim jackets, skirts, and jumpsuits were all popular. The fabric’s versatility made it a go-to for both casual and slightly dressier looks, with designers experimenting with patchwork and embellishments to elevate its appeal.
10. Accessories: Scarves, Hats, and Jewelry
Accessories in the 1970s were big and bold. Wide-brimmed hats, colorful scarves, and chunky beaded jewelry added flair to outfits. Belts with oversized buckles and large sunglasses also became must-have items, with many fashion enthusiasts layering multiple accessories to make a statement.
