The Loud Silence of Francine Green.

Cushman, Karen (author).

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Set in Los Angeles in 1949, Cushman’s latest historical novel captures the terrors and confusions of the McCarthy era. Eighth-grader Francine admires her outspoken, precocious friend Sophie, who was kicked out of public school for painting “There is no free speech here” on the gymnasium floor. Francine feels muzzled at home and at her rigid Catholic school, “the land of ‘Sit down, Francine’ and ‘Be quiet, Francine.’” Her worries escalate as Communist scares in Hollywood grow, and Sophie and her playwright father fall under suspicion. Cushman adroitly transforms what could have been a didactic story about intellectual freedom into an integrated, affecting novel about friendship and growing up. Described in Francine’s authentic voice, which is filled with period slang, the smoothly inserted historical details, from Montgomery Clift to backyard bomb shelters, personalize Francine’s adolescent struggles rather than simply marking a place and a time. Readers will skip over unknown cultural references (“My heart pounded like a Gene Krupa drum solo”) and savor the story of friends and family tensions, the sly humor, and the questions about patriotism, activism, and freedom, which bring the novel right into today’s most polarizing controversies. Sure to provoke lively class discussion, this will easily absorb independent readers in search of a rich, satisfying story about early adolescence. For another young person’s view of the McCarthy hunts, suggest Ellen Levine’s Catch a Tiger by the Toe (2005).