Duck and Cover: Eleven Short Stories

Kirkus Reviews—Best Books of 2018. Reader's Favorite—5 Stars. “A sometimes-luminous, sometimes-mordant collection that undercuts its nostalgia with complex ironies.” — Kirkus ReviewsDuck and Cover is a collection of short stories about growing up in the Sixties.The kids of Milford live in the greatest age ever. They have hula hoops and Stingray bikes, Willie Mays and Betty Crocker, Atlas rockets and new-model Fords, Disneyland, the Beatles, and free love. Life is fabulous! But if you look closer, you see they are shadowed by dangers—the dark undercurrents of a changing world. Commies and nukes, suspicious neighbors and predatory adults, the Mob and the Draft.How will the kids of Milford navigate the ecstasies and furies of their era while coping with the universal mysteries of growing up?“Elliott writes with a supple, naturalistic style that’s also psychologically rich,” states Kirkus Reviews. “ . . . . The result is a vivid evocation of postwar America that’s both halcyon and haunted.”If you like the humor of Jean Shepherd (“A Christmas Story”) and the irony and human complexities in Alice Munro, you will love Duck and Cover.