Fiction Review & Author Interview: The Optimistic Decade

I mentioned here on the blog that I have started writing author interviews for Shelf Awareness, and my first interview was published this week, with Heather Abel, author of The Optimistic Decade, a thoughtful novel that explores activism in the early 90's.

I read The Optimistic Decade as one of my Booktopia books for this coming weekend (and for the review), and I really enjoyed the novel. Set in western Colorado with a strong sense of place, the novel considers various members of an activist family who each choose to make a difference in the world in their own way. It is also a coming-of-age story about Rebecca, daughter of a leftist newspaper publisher, and David, her childhood friend, who both spend their summer at a Utopian camp. The novel explores a wide range of different ideas about making a difference, as well as about wilderness and land management. You can read my full review here on Shelf Awareness.

I thoroughly enjoyed interviewing Heather. It was my first author interview, so I was a little nervous, but as soon as we began talking, our conversation flowed. She's lived an interesting life and brought pieces of that into the novel. You can read my interview with Heather here.

And now I am looking forward to meeting Heather in person this weekend at Booktopia!