From the intimacy of small town America to big city life, from World War
II to 9/11, In the Meantime vividly encapsulates an unforgettable
era.On a hot summer’s day in 1931, three five-year-olds meet on a dusty
street in a small Midwestern town, beginning a friendship that will last
all their lives. Kathryn, the oldest in an ever-expanding family, is
bright and earnest, and thinks she wants to become a nurse. Starling is
an only child with an absent father. He doesn’t yet know that he is of
mixed race-he doesn’t even know what that means-all he knows is that
when he grows up he will be a star. Luke doesn’t know what he wants,
except for his older brother not to be dead.Together they experience the
joys and pains of childhood, although the anxieties of puberty and
awakening sexuality nearly destroy their three-way friendship forever.
Reaching adulthood after World War II, they follow their dreams to New
York City, where they discover that not even Manhattan is free of racism
and prejudice.Through the years of their ever-entwined adult lives some
dreams are realized while others grow dim, but one constant remains:
their bond of friendship. At the book’s end, some seventy years after it
began, only one of them remains to tell the story of their lives, and of
what happened…in the meantime.