Come in from the Cold

“I want yesterday.” That’s all seventeen-year-old Maud can say when she gets the news about her sister: Lucy’s dead, killed in a bomb blast. Without even a body to bury, Maud is left with only questions: How? Why? Maud’s search for answers leads her down the same path her sister took. But all she finds are empty words and more questions. Jeff struggles down a separate but parallel path. His brother, a Marine, has been called up to Vietnam. To the world, Jeff looks the part of a conservative preppy, but inside, he questions the war. But does questioning the war mean he doesn’t support his brother?
It’s 1969, and life in America has become an angry jumble of patriotism and rebellion, cynicism and hope. Jeff and Maud are caught up in the confusion. All they want is stability. What they get is each other. Hopefully, it’ll be enough.

The Vietnam War protest movement brings together two Minnesota teenagers.

“I want yesterday.” That’s all seventeen-year-old Maud can say when she gets the news about her sister: Lucy’s dead, killed in a bomb blast. Without even a body to bury, Maud is left with only questions: How? Why? Maud’s search for answers leads her down the same path her sister took. But all she finds are empty words and more questions. Jeff struggles down a separate but parallel path. His brother, a Marine, has been called up to Vietnam. To the world, Jeff looks the part of a conservative preppy, but inside, he questions the war. But does questioning the war mean he doesn’t support his brother?
It’s 1969, and life in America has become an angry jumble of patriotism and rebellion, cynicism and hope. Jeff and Maud are caught up in the confusion. All they want is stability. What they get is each other. Hopefully, it’ll be enough.

Publishers Weekly

Bittersweet and intensely moving, this novel is a prequel of sorts to Qualey's debut, Everybody's Daughter. The first section centers on Maud, who in the summer of 1969 learns that her sister Lucy, an anti-war activist and fugitive, has just killed herself while bombing a physics lab at the University of Minnesota. Meanwhile, in another part of the state, straight-arrow Jeff-narrator of the second section-earns the ill-will of citizens of his tiny, conservative hometown by organizing peaceful anti-war protests. In one of the few forced moments in this deeply felt novel, Jeff's beloved older brother, a Marine on his second tour of duty, is killed in Vietnam the very same week that Maud's sister dies in the laboratory bombing. Less than a year later Maud and Jeff meet and almost immediately establish a meaningful connection. The evolution of their relationship, and the events that lead Maud and Jeffrey to join the commune Woodlands (a focal point of Everybody's Daughter), fuel the two remaining sections. Told with a quiet forcefulness, the story of these two memorable characters conveys the passionate urgency that marked a turbulent era. Ages 12-up. (Oct.)

Marsha Qualey was born in Austin, Minnesota and has lived in Montana, Texas, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. She now resides in St. Paul with her husband and four children.