I Had Seen Castles

Author: Cynthia Rylant

First line: Pittsburgh was darkness.

Why you should read this book: Shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, seventeen-year-old John Dante falls off a bus and in love with Ginny Burton, who objects to war on principle, while John knows that enlisting is the only way to prove that he is a man, rather than a coward. His father is sent to California to work on what eventually becomes the atomic bomb, his mother becomes Rosy the Riveter, his sister becomes a soldier's girl and ends up shipped off to Ohio to have a soldier's child, and John and Ginny must fumble with their love and their differences in the face of a war that sees one part of the country sacrificing their lives, while another part grows rich off the profits. What John learns in the theater of war will teach him to love Ginny all the more, even as it erects a barrier between John and the rest of America.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You think war is great for the economy.