Set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, follows the chilling stories of eleven school girls who struggle to identify a mysterious poet in the aftermath of a teacher's innocence-shattering disappearance.

Available again in paperback, Golden Days is a major novel from one of the most provocative voices on the American literary scene. Linking the recent past with an imagined future, Carolyn See captures life in Los Angeles in the 70s and 80s. This marvelously imaginative, hilarious, and original work offers fresh insights into the way we were, the way we are, and the way we could end up.

Available again in paperback, Golden Days is a major novel from one of the most provocative voices on the American literary scene. Linking the recent past with an imagined future, this "adventurous blend of feminist fiction and nuclear apocalypse fantasy" (Time) marvelously captures life in Los Angeles in the '70s and '80s.

In the true story Those Golden Days, a ten-year-old kid living in South Central Los Angeles grows up in a secluded and poverty-ridden area of The Hood, where gangs, dope, and dope dealers dwell on the streets. To make a bad situation into a good situation, and to gain experience, the street kids of One Hundred and First, and Vermont and Century, reinvented the wheel to make the best life that could ever be imagined. With friends like Donald R. Golden, who went beyond the barriers of The Hood to seek out new horizons, the author’s fifty-five-year friendship is to this day still filled with adventures and challenges. From when the two kids first meet at the age of ten, and on into their seventies, these lifelong friends are still “Living the Dream” in California. Growing up in the inner city in the 1960s was not easy. Michael J. Manley calls himself happy to have survived all those years of “living large,” and knowing that he and Donald are Best Friends forever.

Golden Days includes twenty oral histories of women who graduated from Mississippi State College for Women (now Mississippi University for Women) at least fifty years ago. From Mary Ellen Weathersby Pope's (1926) description of a teaching career beginning just before the 1927 Delta flood to Juanita McCown Hight's (1934) account of campus conversations with violinist Jascha Heifetz and writer/adventurer Richard Halliburton, these stories illustrate the profound influence of the nation's first public college for women on the lives of the storytellers. Vivid reminiscences about life on campus recall a different world of blue uniforms, rigid rules, and demanding faculty. Even after many decades, these women still clearly remember particular teachers who inspired and pushed them to succeed, midnight dormitory pranks played on long-suffering "social advisers," and the spring Zouave marching drills directed by the indomitable Emma Ody Pohl. Whether they graduated in 1926 or 1956, there is a common thread running through these memories: an appreciation for academic life, strong leadership, cultural experiences that enriched lives, a recognition that the university gave self-confidence to pursue unusual or difficult careers, and a gratitude for remarkable friendships which have lasted a lifetime. The Southern Women's Institute of Mississippi University for Women provides a foundation for research and inclusive outreach through the study of women in both traditional and non-traditional roles. The Institute's research focuses on the history of MUW and the position women hold in the culture and foundation of the South both today and in the future.