AustLit

'Wait ‘til your father gets home! is an intimate and humorous collection of stories about a nuclear family in New Jersey during the 1950s and1960s. Set at the height of the Cold War, the American Civil Rights Movement and post war plenty, these stories give us a glimpse into a lifestyle that was unique to the urban commuting families of that time. Whether she is raiding the chocolates in the fallout shelter, hawking homemade refreshments around the neighbourhood for pocket-money, running the gauntlet past the scariest dog in town or lying in terror knowing that Frankenstein has relocated to her bedroom closet, Dorothy Swoope’s childhood memoirs both entertain and delight. In these stories, we discover a threat even greater than the atomic bomb. It is a mother’s cry: Wait ‘til your father gets home!' (Publication summary)