Expecting to Fly: A Sixties Reckoning

by Martha Tod Dudman

Do you remember what it felt like to be fifteen? Martha Tod Dudman does.
It starts with a blue hash pipe in a shabby field and a hot, tight dance at the Mayflower Hotel, and rapidly accelerates against the kaleidoscopic backdrop of the Sixties.
Describing a time weirdly similar to today, Expecting to Fly recalls a conservative government embroiled in an increasingly unpopular war, racial tensions, and a generation of disillusioned young people looking for something meaningful to believe in - teenagers who, like Dudman, hurled themselves into a sea of drugs and sex they weren't really ready for.
With the same passion and brutal honesty that she brought to her first book, Augusta, Gone - the story of her daughter's troubled adolescence - Dudman re-creates her own wild ride through the turbulent Sixties, vividly recounting scenes you probably experienced yourself.
From the prim tradition of a posh girls' school and debutante parties of Washington, D.C., to the snows of New Hampshire and the campaign for Eugene McCarthy, from living out of a knapsack in Spain to getting stoned on acid in Yellow Springs, Ohio, Expecting to Fly takes us on a blistering trip to a time when the only thing you couldn't be was shocked.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir

256 pages, Hardcover

First published February 24, 2004

Reviews

[Mia Lederer · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was a super interesting read, especially after recently reading the author’s other memoir where she focused on her relationship with her daughter😏 moral of the story, i wish i grew up in the 1960s😍

[Annie Carrott Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's really scary to imagine how many kids did as many drugs as the author did during the heyday of that era. And now it happens too - more than we like to hear about. Her story is captivating and her words draw one into that world she experienced. Worked for McCarthy as a high school teen?!? So impressive - I only had a daisy bumper sticker with his name on it on my car that I was proud to display in my small Midwestern town. The author fell off the earth for a while but managed to scramble her way back into life. I felt the book lost its way a bit with all the drug taking etc while she was at Antioch. Tho, I read this quickly and was entertained by the reminisces of the time. If you remember that time - it's a read worth taking.

[Letitia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having devoured Martha's other book, Augusta, Gone!, I was eager for more from this author.

I don't think the reviews here wrote do this book justice.
I enjoyed it and read it quite quickly.
Having grown up during the 90's myself, I found this book to be an interesting experience of growing up in a more innocent time.
Though the author was quite wild for her time, she was not alone in her quest for experience, coming of age in the swinging sixties.
Yet, always with that flowing and beautiful narrative I loved in her other work.

I look forward to more from this author.

[Elaine · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just happened to see this book as I was browsing the adult biography section of the library. It was at the end of the shelf, and the cover kind of caught my eye. Then when I saw the subtitle (A Sixties Reckoning), well, how could I resist? I expected a memoir that would let me re-live the events and culture of the time when I was a teenager and young adult - Vietnam, the first man on the moon, the Cold War, assassinations, the music, etc. I was rea

[Jeannie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a disappointment for me. I really expected more from the author. The whole book was disjointed which really threw me off.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a bit bored with it in the middle, thinking it had gone too cliche, but loved how she wrapped it up and concluded it.

[Kathryn Yaste · Rating 1 out of 5]

Astonishingly bad.