Praise for THE SIXTIES TRILOGY #1: COUNTDOWN: * "Wiles skillfully keeps many balls in the air, giving readers a story that appeals across the decades as well as offering enticing paths into the history." -- BOOKLIST, starred review* "The larger story . . . told here in an expert coupling of text and design, is how life endures, even triumphs, no matter how perilous the times." -- HORN BOOK, starred review* "References to duct tape (then newly invented), McDonald's and other pop culture lend authenticity to this phenomenal story of the beginnings of radical change in America." -- KIRKUS, starred review* "Wiles palpably recreates the fear kids felt when air-raid sirens and duck-and-cover drills were routine . . . this story is sure to strike a chord with those living through tough times today." -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review

Kirkus Starred Review
Freedom Summer in 1964 Mississippi brings both peaceful protest and violence into the lives of two young people.

Twelve-year-old Sunny, who's white, cannot accept her new stepmother and stepsiblings. Raymond, "a colored boy," is impatient for integration to open the town's pool, movie theater and baseball field. When trained volunteers for the Council of Federated Organizations--an amalgam of civil rights groups--flood the town to register black voters and establish schools, their work is met with suspicion and bigotry by whites and fear and welcome by blacks. In this companion to Countdown (2010) (with returning character Jo Ellen as one of the volunteers), Wiles once again blends a coming-of-age story with pulsating documentary history. Excerpts from contemporary newspapers, leaflets and brochures brutally expose Ku Klux Klan hatred and detailStudent Nonviolent Coordinating Committee instructions on how to react to arrest while on a picket line. Song lyrics from the Beatles, Motown and spirituals provide a cultural context. Copious photographs and subnarratives encapsulate a very wide range of contemporary people and events. But it is Sunny and, more briefly, Raymond who anchor the story as their separate and unequal lives cross paths again and again and culminate in a horrific drive-by shooting. A stepmother to embrace and equal rights are the prizes--even as the conflict in Vietnam escalates.

Fifty years later, 1960s words and images still sound and resound in this triumphant middle volume of the author's Sixties Trilogy.
*"It's an ambitious, heady endeavor that succeeds wonderfully in capturing the atmosphere of that pivotal and eventful summer, with the documents offering a broader context"- Horn Books, starred review
*"Though the novel is long, it's also accessible and moving, and it will open many eyes to the brutal, not-so-distant past out of which a new standard of fairness and equality arose. "- Publishers Weekly, starred review