It’s the spring of 1962, and the world stands on the threshold of its own ‘coming of age.’ In McKinley Heights, Ohio (a semi-fictional suburb of Cleveland), people are preparing for the Sabin Oral Sundays polio vaccine program. Suddenly, late on a Monday afternoon just like any other, a local high school girl goes missing. Early in their investigation, the police are certain that she “must have known her abductor.” Terrified, the tight-knit community reacts.
This is the centerpiece of
S O S
1 9 6 2
the new novel by John P. (Jack) Kristofco.
About the Book
SOS 1962 (222 pages) takes off from the sudden disappearance of Sarah Jane Monroe, a sixteen-year-old high school sophomore, to explore the backgrounds and reactions of a community grounded in the belief that something like that “never happens here.” It does so while considering an array of contributing elements:
- The world of 1962, a time just before an era of enormous change
- Gender roles
- ‘Coming of Age’ and emerging sexuality
- The skepticism of and the faith in ‘new science’
(the Sabin vaccination program)
SOS 1962 deals with its narrative just a bit differently than most ‘mysteries:’
- It is focused on the victim, her family (going back to its roots), and the people who knew her.
- It does not solve the crime. It offers four plausible suspects (about whom the reader learns a great deal) and the two detectives charged with solving the case, but the end of the book comes right after the girl’s body is found.
- It is, by design, a perfect ‘book club’ read: allowing participants to offer their ideas about just who the killer might be and why that suspect makes the most sense of the four.
- It is not overlong. Its 222 pages fit one long plane ride or a couple days at the beach.
NB: S O S is for Sabin Oral Sundays (1962) and Save Our Sally (the community’s theme).