Yet another installation in my historical fiction addiction.
1929 is an inside look at the lives of three young couples, wealthy by any standards prior to the stock market crash of 1929, and what they have to endure to get through life and survive once everything is lost. It is real; it is difficult to read.
I have never before read such a first-person account of the crash. And it left me sad to see the book end. Gardner does a wonderful job of making the reader feel intimately close to all six of the main characters. We feel their desperation as they realize the true breadth of the crash. We feel the need to hurry as they try to find a new place to live, jobs to survive.
From a land where they had servants, furs, and fine china and silver, they are transformed into working peasants, living in a tenemant.
It is beautiful, in the romantic, poetic way, to watch the young couples struggle, and change, and grow together through the hardships that now plague them. As simple as learning to cook, to stretch their money, and as difficult as trying to find a way out - a means to a new life again. The struggles are real, and they are difficult.
My favorite scenes are those that give us a glimpse at life in the 20s. A 20s era that isn't typically glorified in literature. A life where celebrations were simple, and real. And struggling together made people grow closer. Where living with less is an existence.
We as readers get to go with these three young families, as they go from riches, to poverty, and then through the struggle to get back out of the depths of the crash. It is a beautiful moment of human strength and durability.
and the power of love.
for me - the perfect marriage of historical fiction and romance.....
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