When We Were Young and Unafraid

In the early 1970s, before Roe v. Wade, before the Violence Against Women Act, Agnes turned her quiet Whidbey Island bed and breakfast into one of the few spots where victims of domestic violence could seek refuge. But to Agnes’s dismay, her latest runaway, Mary Anne, is beginning to influence Agnes’s college-bound daughter Penny. As the drums of a feminist revolution grow louder outside of her tiny world, Agnes is forced to confront her own presumptions about the women she’s spent her life trying to help.

“Ms. Treem…finds the feminist flux and foment in an era that has been more traditionally presented as comically awkward and quaint. She has come up with a smart and exciting premise to bring characters of different backgrounds—and different notions of what it means to be a woman at a pivotal historical moment—into proximity and conflict.” —NYTimes.