The Series
The first book in the series, Fifties Chix: Travel to Tomorrow™, establishes the characters, their relationships and the overall conflict: they travel to a parallel universe fifty-five years into the future! Succeeding books focus on individual characters and their quests, their specific personalities and their responses to their changing surroundings.
Without giving too many of the secret plot twists away, here is an overview of the books in the Fifties Chix series:
Mary’s desires for a traditional family unit clash with her life in the future; her mom starts dating, her dad gets remarried, her siblings are growing up and she longs for a simpler time. In the mean time, one of her best friends, Ann, expresses more interest in James O’Grady, the boy that Mary has her heart set on. Mary wonders, when you love someone, is it selfish to hang on tight or is it better to let go? Do you have to sacrifice friendship for love?
Ann and Maxine grow closer together as friends for all they have in common. They both love their home country, the USA, but they both realize they have unique heritages. Ann tries to understand her Yugoslavian (now Serbian) history and her place in it as a Jewish American. She also finds a good friend in Beverly’s misfit brother, Gary. Meanwhile, Maxine fights to remain an individual but still fit it in a world that tries to be black or white. Maxine finds her voice in a student-run underground paper, but her words cause a revolution that she wonders if she is prepared to be a part of.
Beverly excels in athletics in a place and time where girls are given more opportunities. As she strives to be the very best, she must deal with an increasingly antagonistic rivalry with her arch-nemesis, Diane Dunkelman. She also makes her interest in Maxine’s African-American cousin, Conrad, public and faces the scrutiny that comes along with it. These issues force her to realize what can be won by nurturing close-knit relationships with her friends and what it means to trust someone with your heart.
At long last, Judy has gotten Bob to look at her as something more than just his little sister’s friend, and she’s gotten the lead in the school play. Will she have to choose between true love and her life purpose? Can the Fifties Chix™ find a way back “home” to 1955 and will they really want to go? Where will they be fifty more years into the future?
