Lewis, Jimmy and Rose are best friends. Lewis and his mother, Ava, are Jewish and on their own. Jimmy and Rose are siblings, also without a father. One day, one of the friends go missing. The neighborhood is left shaken. Years later, Lewis and Rose piece together what happened on that terrible day.

What a beautiful, heartbreaking story. The characters were beautifully crafted! I can't wait to read more by this author!

Thank you to NetGalley and Algonquin Books for the opportunity to read and review this book!

You’re going to be kept guessing to the very end of the book to find out what happened to Jimmy when he disappeared. Set in the 1950’s, you’ll be introduced to the racial and religious bias that was prevalent in Cold War America.

Excellent book, great plot with very interesting characters. I loved the 50s era setting. The author's use of different third person points of view throughout kept things moving and kept me intrigued, made the characters seem more like real people.

I read Caroline Leavitt's best selling and critically acclaimed novel Pictures of You a few years ago and became so invested in her characters and story, I couldn't wait to see what she would write next. It was worth the wait because Is This Tomorrow is a knockout of a novel.



Ava Lark is a divorcee with a twelve-year-old son Lewis. They move to a small suburb near Boston in 1956, where a divorced woman, not to mention a Jewish divorced woman, is looked upon with suspicion.



The only friend she has is a widow, Dot, who has two children Jimmy and Rose. Jimmy, Rose and Lewis are best friends, and Jimmy has a little crush on Ava. Ava is kind to Jimmy and Rose, but when Jimmy goes missing, people (including the police) focus their attention on Ava and the many men (six) she has dated over the past three years.



While the framework of the missing boy propels the storyline, it is the characters of Ava and Lewis who are the heart of this story. Rather than a typical mystery novel, this beautiful book is about what it feels like to be an outsider.



Ava is lonely; the women she works with leave her out of their social activities and the neighborhood women fear that the beautiful Ava will steal their husbands. She dates a musician, and planned to introduce him to Lewis on the day that Jimmy disappeared.



The boyfriend asks Ava to move away with him, but she cannot do that to Lewis. He is devastated by the disappearance of his best friend, and he and Rose spend all their time trying to find out what happened to Jimmy.



Leavitt clearly did a lot of research of the time period. I felt totally immersed in the atmosphere of that time- the fear of Communism, the food they ate, the clucking about Ava being a working woman, the way the neighborhood kids played outside without adult supervision.



The second half of the book moves forward in time, and we see Lewis working as a nurse aide. I just fell in love with Lewis, and my heart ached so much for him. He struggles to find his place in this world, to find someone to love and share his life, but is difficult to get beyond his past.



The mystery of what happens to Jimmy is solved, and how it is solved comes as a shock to many people, myself included.



Leavitt writes beautifully and her turn of phrase really caught my eye. As Lewis gets older, he no longer gives Ava a kiss goodnight.

"I forgot," he'd tell her in the morning, but he forgot to kiss her more and more, and she found herself collecting those losses like debts that might never be paid."



When Lewis begins to meet his coworkers at a weekly bowling game, he thinks about how little he really knows his friends.

"It made him wonder how well he really knew John or Mick, or when you thought about it, how well they knew him. When he talked, he shot the breeze about the hospital or Madison. It was all casual, loose as pocket change that never adds up to anything."

I think most people at one time or another have felt like an outsider, and so can relate to Ava and Lewis. Leavitt taps into those feelings of loneliness, and brings these characters to vivid life. We feel for Lewis and are grateful that we don't face the uncertainty that Dot and Rose feel when Jimmy is missing.



It is said that good fiction makes the reader empathetic; if that is true, then Is This Tomorrow is great fiction, for my heart ached for all of the people in this terrific novel, an Indie Next Pick for May.



rating 5 of 5



Caroline Leavitt's website is here.

My post on Car

Set in 1956 with a central character that is living life definitely against the grain in the current time - a divorced single mom who is in the workforce and trying to raise her son in suburbia. One would say this could be historical fiction and I may agree because it is definitely not completely contemporary, but I enjoyed reading a story where I could imagine a woman getting heat for her lifestyle, it could compare to current social issues in the news. Her son's best friend goes missing and the story takes off after that!

From the start I loved all of the characters and was rooting for them all. I wanted Rose to open up to Lewis about her feelings, I wanted Ava to feel satisfaction on the job and as a single mom, and I wanted Lewis to find happiness in his abilities as a student. Because I was rooting for them, this book read so quickly! When these three characters dispersed (promise not a spoiler), I loved how the author kept the reader up to date on each one. It was done so seamlessly.

Although I really enjoyed this book, the last 50 pages dragged just a little. I also wish the conclusion had been a little better defined, but beyond these two things, this book was really good. It is my first Caroline Leavitt book, and most certainly not my last!

Set in the suburbs of Boston, MA, 1956, Ava Lark and her son Lewis have rented a run-down house in a nice, safe, family neighborhood. The other families seem to look down on newcomers - Ava is divorced and the only Jewish person living in the neighborhood. Lewis finds it hard making new friends, except for Rose and Jimmy who also live in a fatherless home. Set in the midst of the Cold War and the paranoia which exists, Jimmy goes missing without a trace. His disappearance deeply affects Rose and Lewis who are certain Jimmy must be alive. They are determined to get to the bottom of his disappearance, which is eventually revealed. Fast forward seven years Lewis is now living and working in Wisconsin and Rose is in PA but, the two are forever changed

I enjoyed this audio book but, at times the voices seemed a bit too depressing. I loved the setting and descriptions of what life was like back then, as it's always nice to read about a time period a baby boomer like me can relate to. The author's writing is very descriptive and, although the story of what happened to Jimmy seemed to fall into place too easily, I still enjoyed this one. (4/5 stars)

We will definitely be purchasing this book for our little library. It was a fast read & very gripping. I have been talking about it to our patrons who are looking for a good book. We now have a wait list going for it.