All Shook Up: A Novel

Paula Levy is being raised in 1956 in a middle-class family in Queens. Her mother was fourteen during the Great Depression, and her father had to flee Nazi Germany, so they are not very sympathetic to what utter DRAGS they are. They make her wear pleated skirts and sweater sets, and care about her academic work. They even make comments about the rock music that has recently enthralled her like "Music she calls it. I thought the furnace had exploded!" This is why it is so important that she has made a "cool" friend at school, Barbara. Barbara has blonde streaks in her hair, wears makeup, and wears tight skirts and sweaters. While the two bond over a love of rock music and Catcher in the Rye, Barbara can't possibly been seen in public with such a drip. Paula is a little concerned; her neighbor Margaret, whose parents knew her father in Germany, is a goodie two shoes who never hesitates to tattle on her. When rumors swirl that Elvis will be on the Milton Berle show, Barbara makes plans to go to the studio and meet him, but Paula learns when she watches the show that it was filmed in California. She eventually visits Barbara's apartment, which is disheveled, and learns that Barbara's mother is remarried. After Margaret shows Paula a picture of her father with another woman and baby girl, she has Barbara help her look through family pictures to find out more information, after a perusal of the phone book in the local drugstore doesn't turn up any information. Mrs. Levy is appalled to find Barbara in the home, and the parents sit down and tell her that yes, the father had another family, but they were swept up in the Holocaust, and no, she can never see that tramp again! After Barbara is caught kissing 19-year-old Billy in her living room, she is hauled to the doctor to make sure she is not pregnant, and threatened with an all girls' Catholic school. Since the girls are so fed up with their lives, they decide to run away. At first, Memphis sounds like a good idea, but Paula has questions. She suggests going to Cleveland to live with her Aunt, but Barbara thinks that sounds like Nowheresville. Instead, they settle on going to Hoboken and staying with Barbara's estranged father. After withdrawing $285 from Paula's savings, the two take off, and find the father's run down apartment easily enough. It turns out he is a jazz musician, but Barbara doesn't really want to stay with him. The girls return to the city but make the mistake of talking to some sailors on leave. The sailors make advances, and the police accuse the girls of "plying their trade" and get set to arrest them. Luckily, Barbara's father has alerted her mother, who shows up at the bus station. There's quite an altercation, and even the parents start to throw insults at each other. In the end, things are worked out, and because Paula has stood up to her parents, they start to get along a little better.