Dear Ann by Bobbie Ann Mason

 “I have often wondered what would have happened to me if I had gone to the West Coast after college instead of the East Coast…The question prompted this novel...” said Bobbie Ann Mason in the acknowledgements of Dear Ann, her latest novel.

The main character, Ann Workman, is looking back at her life when she decides to re-imagine it if she had chosen a different path from the one she chose. That different path has her going to graduate school at Stanford, smoking pot, dropping acid, and being in love. Her love interest appears to be the same boy she was in love with in her real life, Jimmy, an upper class boy from Chicago. Music and literature drive their day-to-day life while the Vietnam War overshadows their existence. This other-life Ann finds herself participating in anti-war demonstrations and visiting Haight-Ashbury.

For readers who grew up in the 1960s, an element of nostalgia comes into play as hits of the day are interwoven into the text as well as many of the works of literature that were popular in college courses at that time.

Bobbie Ann Mason’s memoir, Clear Springs, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2000. Her other titles include In Country and Shiloh and Other Stories. She lives in her native state of Kentucky.