“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” Author Releases Book for Adults

As a child, Judy Blume was my go-to author. From “Blubber to Deenie to Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” I was sucked into Judy’s books. As a matter of fact, I was recently cleaning out my stuff and found “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margret” and had a sudden urge to revisit my childhood.

I’m not a girl anymore, but I’m excited over Judy Blume once again and this time because she’s written a book for adults. It took Blume five years to write "In the Unlikely Event,” but it finally hits shelves today, June 2nd.

It was January 2009 when the idea for the book came to Blume and the book is based on the real life events of three plane crashes that happened in Blume's hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, in the winter of 1951-1952.

Good Reads offers a synopsis of the storyline:

In 1987, Miri Ammerman returns to her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, to attend a commemoration of the worst year of her life. Thirty-five years earlier, when Miri was fifteen, and in love for the first time, a succession of airplanes fell from the sky, leaving a community reeling. Against this backdrop of actual events that Blume experienced in the early 1950s, when airline travel was new and exciting and everyone dreamed of going somewhere, she paints a vivid portrait of a particular time and place—Nat King Cole singing “Unforgettable,” Elizabeth Taylor haircuts, young (and not-so-young) love, explosive friendships, A-bomb hysteria, rumors of Communist threat. And a young journalist who makes his name reporting tragedy. Through it all, one generation reminds another that life goes on.

 

Blume is 77-years-old and it sounds like this might be the last book she releases, but that she'll continue writing other things. She told People: "I'm not saying I won't write, but the intensity, the long hours, the 7 days a week, it's a lot. "I'm grateful to be done tackling this. I really am. I'm kind of euphoric."