Younger Than That Now: A Shared Passage from the Sixties

An unforgettable dual memoir that explores an extraordinary friendship ... and illuminates a generation.

It began in 1969, when a group of bored Long Island high school reporters wrote, for a lark, an obnoxious note to Ruth Tuttle, the editor of a school paper in small-town Mississippi. The ringleader, Jeff Durstewitz, impulsively dropped the letter into a mailbox, never suspecting that within a few days he'd receive an electrifying response. In the following flurry of letters, genteelly Southern Ruth and brash New Yorker Jeff explored their feelings about God, race, sex, and life — and an enduring friendship was begun.

Over the next thirty years, this long-distance bond sustained Ruth and Jeff through love affairs and heartbreak, social change and disillusionment, divorce and the loss of a cherished friend. As their letters chart their passage from youth to middle age, their memoir captures not just the hopes of an era yearning for revolution and the soul of a country on the brink of change, but also the essence of being bright, young, and passionate. Sharp, funny, and true, here is a mirror for a generation — both then and now.