A few months ago, I added 15 books to my Goodreads page on a special “a-time-to-cast-away-stones-readings” Bookshelf. These were books I read while researching background and events for my historical novel, A Time to Cast Away Stones, set in Berkeley and Paris in 1968. Suddenly, arcane nonfiction books like Prague's 200 Days: The Struggle For Democracy In Czechoslovakia by Harry Schwartz was popping up on my Facebook page, my Goodreads author page, and other random online spots—as if I were recommending these or calling them my “favorites”! Schwartz was a basic resource for the Czechoslovak part of my novel, just as Daniel Singer’s Prelude to Revolution and Charles Benedetti’s An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era were go-to scholarly works for the French and U.S. parts of my story, respectively.

Back to Goodreads. I began to regret creating that Bookshelf. After all, I had already made these “Selected Readings” available, both on my website and in the novel’s “Reader’s Guide.”

Attention Goodreads friends: only the need to delve deeply into the events of 1968, especially in Berkeley, Paris and Prague, could motivate a reader to take up these nonfiction studies. The “Selected Readings” are only a small part of my research. There were newspaper and magazine clippings, pamphlets, brochures, monographs and journals displayed by radical tablers from Sproul Placa to the Sorbonne Courtyard. Many works were out of print, others later became available on the Internet. Why did I conduct this meticulous study, spending many hours over many years haunting used and antiquarian bookshelves and the library at the University of California at Berkeley?

In 1995, my mother found a cache of letters that I had written during my college years. Among them were what amounted to a 50-page, single-spaced “diary,” all written on crackling thin onion skin stationery or aerograms, which I had written to my parents from Europe in 1968. Re-reading those letters, my interest re-ignited in the American civil rights and anti-war movements and concurrent European protests. I sought details about the scenes and decisions behind the events which I had witnessed, and answers to questions about my own emotional and intellectual growth during that heady period.

Although I found many nonfiction accounts of events, there was little fiction. And although the fiction is more accessible, it is not for everyone. All of it is highly-charged and political, authors taking a side and sticking by it. Most of the time, as with my favorites—Ferlinghetti and Kundera—this makes the stories thrilling. I DO recommend their work! But even in these novels, the viewpoints of the young characters known to be involved in the events of their day were missing. I craved a book that contained a more balanced view – easy to do in fiction, since you can “view” events through the eyes of many different characters. More specifically, I sought characters in their teens and twenties—so I created them myself. If you would like a more complete bibliography, please email me at elisefmiller68 at gmail dot com.

My real recommendations from this Bookshelf? Follow your interests, of course, but besides the beautifully-written novel, In the Days of Love and Rage by beat poet and City Lights founder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, for French history, I would recommend two nonfiction accounts: When Poetry Ruled the Streets: The French May Events of 1968 by Andrew Feenberg and the volume of archival photos of the May Revolution, Protest in Paris, 1968 by Serge Hambourg. For readers interested in learning more about Berkeley in the 60s, my highest recommendation goes to the readable Berkeley at War: The 1960s by W.J. Borabaugh. Finally, for an overall account, if you don’t mind the editorial comments, read 1968: The Year that Rocked the World by Mark Kurlansky a view of how that was a pivotal political year all over the world.

And of course, don’t miss the authentic experience of well-researched history through the eyes of young and engaged fictional characters in A Time to Cast Away Stones by yours truly.