The Summer Everything Changed

"It was a summer of war. The summer of Rudi but mostly of that other boy. THe summer of Lilly, a girl I never met but who has always been with me. It was the summer everything changed." 

So begins this story of a teenage girl's awakening during the height of WWII in the summer of 1943. Meet Janet Kessler, daughter of immigrant parents and the sole Jewish family in town. The novel, told in diary form, reveals the culture of small town mid-west America during the war, the yearning for love, as well as Janet's growing awareness of the horrors of war and discovery of her deeper values.