Swing. It was a dance. It was music. It was a way of leaving behind the drudgery and sadness that enveloped America in 1939. Most adults saw it as perfectly sinful. Most youth saw it as pure escape. Swing is the one year diary of an eighteen-year-old girl who lives for the escape that swing gives her and her friends.

Follow Margo, her sister, and her friends as they travel through their senior year of high school, looking forward to where they will go next and looking back at where they've been. From her father's depression at not getting to travel to her mother caring for the occasional hobo passing through their town, Margo's life is full of ups and downs that she handles one at a time. She sees the need to break away from small town life, as well as her longtime boyfriend, in order to get on with her life after graduation. But no matter what happens, the music and the dancing is always there, ready to sweep her into another world where life is wonderful.

Truthfully, I expected this to be a more fun and interesting read as it's targeted at the young adult readership. It would probably be better appreciated by the sixty to seventy-year-old reader who wants to relive those days between the Depression and WWII or to remember what it was like to live in a small town or those who have an undying love for the swing era of music. Personally, I thought it could move a bit faster as Margo jumps here and there in her musing, sometimes losing me in the process. To the right reader, Swing is an abundance of entertainment and enlightenment about the era but it's not for everyone.

Reviewed by MargeAnna Conrad
© January 2006