Description
Book SynopsisIndiana University, September 1963. Meri Henriques, a naïve freshman from New York, arrives on campus thinking she’s about to enroll at an idyllic Midwestern college. Instead, she discovers a storm is brewing. An intriguing cast of characters inhabits Meri’s new and often troubled world: Katherine “Pixie” Gates, Meri’s charming and quirky roommate; Rachel, brilliant and sarcastic fellow New Yorker; Daniel, a tough radical with a tender heart; folk singer Derek Stone, Meri’s crush; and Shennandoah Waters, a white coed who only dates black men or exotic foreigners, much to her ultra-conservative parents’ horror. Over the course of Meri’s first year at college, tragedy strikes twice: John Kennedy is assassinated, and a young, black IU basketball player is castrated and thrown into a ditch—murdered for dating a white coed. And finally, that year’s commencement ceremonies bring an infamous symbol of white supremacy to campus, endangering anyone who dared to protest—thrusting Meri into the middle of violent and escalating racial tensions. Vivid and compelling, Hoosier Hysteria is a timely story of prejudice and political unrest that, today more than ever before, must be told.
Trade Review2019 ELit Book Awards bronze medal in Autobiography/Memoir “Readers interested in Midwestern history, American race relations, and stories of culture shock will find the book both stimulating and convincing. This well-paced narrative absorbingly depicts a handful of lives in Indiana in a pivotal year." —Kirkus Reviews “Vahl, a Jew from New York, was among the first students to live in an integrated dorm room at the conservative campus. In her desire to strike out on her own, she had unwittingly entered the front lines of a battle over race and culture that would rage throughout her freshman year, as she precisely recounts in this memoir.” —Booklist
