The Change Chronicles: A Novel of the Sixties Antiwar Movement

In the Sixty's predawn of the Women's Liberation Movement, young Nora Seikh, full of self-doubts after an abusive relationship and a failed subsequent attempt at love, searches amid Berkeley's budding antiwar movement for new ways to live and love, even while she struggles to find new paths to peace. Reporting antiwar news for the Berkeley Barb, she meets a flamboyant activist and, after a brief affair, is left pregnant and alone. She flings herself into the nonviolent vigil and demonstrations at the gates of Port Chicago, West Coast shipping point for weapons to the Vietnam War. There, she comes to share the demonstrators' mutual caring and to quietly love Ted, a vigil leader. On the night Ted races forward to stop a weapons truck that will not halt, she must confront her old self-doubts and fears, and risk all--life and freedom and even the child she bears--to reach him. Taking this step, she comes to see her own, and others', deepest need is to give love. Months later, Nora gives birth. No longer so self-doubting, still she cannot--in those years of the "baby-scoop era"--break through the overweening concept "a child needs a home with two parents," and gives up her baby in adoption, "for his sake." Then Nora must go on, trying to balance sorrows and hope--and to continue the struggle for a better world.

Review :
Brave people who join movements for justice ... experience these movements as a crucible. Paula Friedman takes us inside this reality. Elegantly rendered, her characters illuminate the joys, conflicts, and transformations of those at the center of movements. This is a book to share and discuss--a triumph. --Wesley Hogan, director, Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University; author, Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC's Dream for a New America A unique perspective of the '60s antiwar movement through the lens of a young woman and her fear for her unborn child ...Tells the story of a woman--and a generation--with the raw intensity, vivid sense of place, and credibility of somebody who was there. --Maya Khankhoje, Contributing Editor, Montreal Serai; author, A Panther in Your Dreams Your book meant so much to me .... I too believe if something is obviously wrong, we have no choice but to halt it. My heart was aching for [protagonist Nora as she decides whether to give her child in adoption]. It is a pain none of us should ever have to suffer. --Sandy Musser, adoption reform activist who served a federal prison sentence for her work on behalf of open birth records; author of I Would Have Searched Forever and To Prison with Love The antiwar activism of the 1960s brought forth thorny issues of identity. Friedman vividly brings to life those years and an unforgettable and courageous young woman, her comrades, and the men who love her. --Jill Nagy, author, lawyer, journalist An insightful look into the mind of a woman who learns to overcome failed and abusive relationships and her own fears in late-'60s America ... to become an independent force--in her own life and that of others. --Jack McDaniel, author of the Pan21 trilogy: Agents of the Undertow, Agents of Hope, Agents of Change