Campaign for the American Reader: What is Linda Kass reading?

Sunday, September 06, 2026

What is Linda Kass reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Linda Kass, author of World News from Waverley High: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I recently finished back-to-back readings of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and Colson Whitehead’s Cool Machine, third in his crime trilogy set in New York. I was left with an impression that Whitehead’s Ray Carney had some aligned traits, or at least parallels, with Morrison’s Mason Dead II, both Black businessmen who make property, commerce, and respectability central to their identities. But this is something I need to contemplate further. To review each:

Song of Solomon was written in 1977 and Morrison’s third novel after The Bluest Eye and Sula. It’s a deep and sprawling story that blends magical realism, folklore, and poetic prose. It follows Macon "Milkman" Dead III (Macon Dead II’s son) on a coming-of- age journey from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s origins as it explores identity formation and evolution, intergenerational family trauma, and African American heritage. The characters are rich but flawed from Milkman and his self-absorbed youth to his estranged and mystical aunt Pilate and the complex women who carry the emotional weight of the narrative. I love Morrison’s attention to detail, especially in expressing tense emotion and speech. The novel covers nearly...[read on]

About World News from Waverley High, from the publisher:

A tale of identity, activism, and finding your voice in a world on fire, this coming-of-age novel set at an urban high school captures a singular moment in American history—through the eyes of one unforgettable girl.

1969. Lena Rosen is an intelligent, observant teenager torn between spontaneity and self-consciousness. During her junior year, she becomes attuned to the pulse of her times in her first-period Current History class, where rebellion, social change, and musical innovation of the 1960s dominate discussion. When Lena becomes the associate editor of the school newspaper The Beacon, she is drawn into the swirling discourse surrounding the Vietnam War, civil rights, environmental disasters, and campus protests—while also grappling with her growing attraction to Jack Stone, the paper’s editor.

As the year progresses and the antiwar movement gains momentum, the unrest builds at Waverley High. Lena wrestles with her own cultural and religious identity as a Jewish teen while she and her fellow students struggle to cope with racial discord, a bomb threat, and the emotional toll of a world that seems to be unraveling. When tragedy collapses the distance between headlines and Lena’s own life, she must decide what it means to stand for peace—and to hope for a better world.

Set during one school year against the backdrop of an America on the brink of change, World News from Waverley High reveals the crossroads of personal growth and national unrest.