In Tom Perrotta’s new novel, a successful writer named Jimmy Perrini is invited to return to his hometown in suburban New Jersey. The invitation takes him back to a difficult summer when he was in eighth grade and had just lost his mother to cancer. Ghost Town revisits that 1970s summer, one colored by strip malls, troublemakers, the Vietnam War, an Ouija board, and racial tensions in Perrini’s white, working-class town. In today’s episode, Perrotta speaks with Here & Now’s Robin Young about the bygone era of his own childhood.
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