So I read Okay for Now and loved that. I had to read this one, in which Doug from OFN is a minor character. TWW takes place before Doug moves to Marysville from Long Island and doesn't really feature Doug as much as his tough brother, who is a source of misery for Holling Hoodhood, the only WASP in his class and therefore the only kid who has to stay behind on Wednesday afternoons instead of going to religious education classes at the local Roman Catholic Church or synagogue.
The backdrop for this story is the Vietnam War and wow, there is a lot of powerful stuff here. When kids come in looking for historical fiction, the tendency is for them to look for books on the American Revolutionary or Civil War and to a lesser extent, WW2, but this is one that I will push and push along with with Shooting the Moon and Countdown, One Crazy Summer and others that are from less written about time periods in history.
There is so much in this book. The dynamic between Holling and his father, his sister's trip out west, so much more. It is so neat to see the way that Holling develops in the book. And it even made me want to read Shakespeare! Fantastic book. It also taught me what a jerk Mickey Mantle was!
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