From Publishers Weekly
Her latest novel exhibits Siddons's ( Hill Towns ) strengths and weaknesses in equal measure and may leave her fans underwhelmed, disappointed in her uninspired and often pretentious story line. The background, Atlanta in the heady '60s, is well done, but Siddons's penchant for excessive prose and hokey nostalgia often gets out of hand. Maureen "Stormy" O'Donnell is a naive young woman from a working-class Irish-Catholic family who moves to Atlanta in the mid-'60s to write for a local magazine. (Her ease in getting the job and her overjoyed welcome by her new colleagues is the stuff of fairy tales.) She's romanced by socially prominent, old-money swain Brad Hunt but has conflicting feelings about crusading photojournalist Luke Geary . During the course of the narrative, Stormy tackles Atlanta high society, triumphs over a bigoted lieutenant governor and becomes involved in the civil rights movement--and with one of its charismatic stars, John Howard. All this is rendered with a cloying, wide-eyed enthusiasm that hobbles Siddons's attempts to explore the South's prejudice and racism. Her language, which in past books has sometimes teetered toward the overblown, now positively gushes. Atlanta has "a sliver of Brigadoon through its heart," and Brad is so handsome Stormy "almost laughed aloud." Still, readers may welcome Siddons's attempt to grapple with moral and social issues. 300,000 first printing; $325,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild main selection; first serial to Cosmopolitan; audio rights to Harper Audio; author tour . Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Echoes of Pat Conroy and Tennessee Williams can be heard in half a dozen apocalyptic scenes, keeping us flipping through the last 200 pages of this hefty chronicle of Atlanta in the Sixties. The narrative is slow to warm up, as protagonist Maureen "Smoky" O'Donnell emerges from the Savannah docks to write for Atlanta's award-winning Downtown magazine. Mentored by the charismatic editor-in-chief, Smoky gets awards for covering the city's war on poverty. As the novel gains momentum, she dumps wealthy Brad to find adventure with Freedom Summer veteran Lucas-only to lose him to the war in Vietnam. Siddons (Hill Towns, HarperCollins, 1993, and other very popular novels), one of the first senior editors of Atlanta magazine, has drawn on memory to create a satisfying historical romance spiced with wry humor.--Joyce Smothers, Monmouth Cty. Lib., Manalapan, N.J.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Siddons has had a solid winning streak with her seductive portrayals of plucky southern gals holding their own in alien territory, so she's stayed with a sure thing: Smoky O'Donnell is a pretty, curvaceous shanty Irishwoman straight from the docks of Savannah. Smoky is an anomaly in her small, angry world: a young woman with ambition, talent, and a wide-open mind. It's 1966, and change is in the air, especially in the newly glamorous mecca of Atlanta. Smoky is lucky; she's been invited to join the chummy staff of a hip little city magazine. Blunt, determined, and passionate, she soon finds herself caught between two extremes: the wealthy, Waspish power elite and the volatile civil-rights movement. Siddons devotes a lot of ink to describing the conflicting dynamics of this time and place and often seems overwhelmed by material we sense is close to her heart. In fact, for the first 100 pages or so, she seems to be driving with the brakes on. When she does let loose, she treats us to some irresistible romance as well as an unusual, if cursory, dramatization of the struggle between the Black Panthers and followers of Martin Luther King, Jr. What's intriguing about Siddons is how much she transcends the usual parameters of fluff fiction, both in terms of literary finesse and penetrating intelligence. Although this isn't quite up to the caliber of her last book, Hill Towns , it's still a rewarding and bound-to-be-popular page-turner. Donna Seaman


From Kirkus Reviews
Fresh from a fictional European jaunt in last year's Hill Towns, Siddons returns to the American South to depict a sheltered young woman's first taste of independence in the late 1960s. Raised to be a ``decent Catholic girl,'' 26-year-old Smoky O'Donnell leaves her working-class Savannah home for the bright lights of Atlanta, lured by a job offer from Matt Comfort, the talented and high-spirited editor of Downtown magazine. The newest senior editor easily fits in with ``Comfort's People,'' the magazine's small in-house staff, and relishes the on-the-town group socializing that is part of the job, but she becomes frustrated by Matt's (sexist) insistence on occupying her with mundane tasks. Smoky's break comes when she meets charming and wealthy Brad Hunt, who wants her to conduct his previously scheduled Downtown interview--as their first date. The civil rights movement exists only as background to the sheltered Smoky, and although Brad mentions the race ``problem,'' this thread is taken up by two people who become increasingly important to her: Lucas Geary, an accomplished photographer with an irritating habit of aiming his Leica up women's skirts, and his friend John Howard, who is one of Martin Luther King's ``closest lieutenants.'' Smoky's career progresses as satisfactorily as does her romance with Brad. Yet even before Lucas and art director Tom Gordon head out for a look at the ``youth culture'' across the American landscape, one senses that the heady '60s culture (and Downtown as microcosm) will be shown to contain self-indulgence and other seeds of its own decay. Siddons draws her ensemble cast with confidence and panache. But her treatment of serious subjects like race, abortion, and the sexual revolution is troubled by ambiguity, as if she were playing both sides of these volatile issues. (First serial to Cosmopolitan; Book-of-the-Month Club main selection; $325,000 ad/promo; author tour) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
The year was 1966. And for Atlanta,the country, and one woman making her way in a changing world, nothing would ever be the same. Set in the cusp of the country's great social movements, in the year before love turned to anger and peace to militancy, Downtown is a story of Smoky O'Donnell, her career and her heart. When Smoky arrives in Atlanta in 1966, after an airless lifetime back in Savannah, she is at once thrilled and chastened by this dazzling, hectic young city on the move. Her new job as a writer with Atlanta's Downtown magazine introduces her to many unforgettable people, including three young men who will change her life in ways she never thought possible. Smoky's choices, and her ultimate decisions, create a tender, joyous and powerful story of the end of innocence -- both Smoky's and America's -- at a time when traditional values are in question and the air is laden with possibilities. Full of the masterful characterizations, probing insight and lyrical prose for which Anne Rivers Siddons is justly acclaimed, Downtown is another stunning achievement from an extraordinary writer. "Spellbinding." --New York Daily News


From the Publisher
Having traveled outside the South in her recent novels, Anne Rivers Siddons returns to her hometown and the setting of Peachtree Road, the 1988 fictional saga of Atlanta that launched her onto national bestseller lists. Her 10th novel, Downtown tells the story of Smoky O'Donnell, a bright young woman who arrives in Atlanta in 1966 in search of an exciting beginning to a new life. A nostalgic love note to the innocence and promise of Atlanta in the '60s, Downtown is also a tender account of one woman's difficult choices and personal triumphs. A vibrant and fast-paced city on the move and on the make, Atlanta is one of the first cities to have its own magazine, called Downtown, and it is where Smoky sets out to make her mark as a writer. Though Smoky has to literally earn her wings as a female reporter for the male-dominated magazine, she gains membership into an intimate family of dedicated staff members headed by Matt Comfort, a flamboyant and charismatic editor who is known everywhere in the city. "To be on its masthead was to own a piece of the city," recalls Smoky. More than any previous novel, the details of Downtown mirror the facts of Anne Rivers Siddons' own life. Siddons got her start as a staff writer for Atlanta magazine, one of America's first city magazines. Founded by Jim Townsend, a revered mentor to a whole generation of Atlanta writers, the magazine came to life in the exciting decade of the '60s, when the city was emerging as a political center for the civil rights movement and redefining itself as the South's metropolis of the future. Downtown captures the energy of the city at this turning point. "Before the '60s, there was no doubt that the pristine insularity of Atlanta would hold," Siddons explains. "Then, hordes of young people infiltrated the city and two worlds just jammed against each other, like tectonic plates. In Downtown, I tried to capture the feeling that everything was about to change. It was very powerful." Borrowing its title from the Petula Clark song as well as the name of the city magazine where Smoky works, Downtown weaves in the sights and sounds of a generation redefining itself. Far from her Irish Catholic family in Savannah and outside the stately Tudor mansions of Atlanta's wealthy Buckhead community, Smoky discovers a world of shiny vinyl, Motown, and the birth-control pill. By the surprising end of Downtown, "the Atlanta I had come in search of" is a distant memory for Smoky. Unlike her protagonist, Siddons still calls Atlanta home after 30 years, though she speaks of the changes there with mixed emotions. In the now-defunctLear's magazine, Siddons wrote of Atlanta: "A woman can make a name for herself here that shine on many shores. Woman can, and some do, create and topple personal empires here... but they do so in ruffles... Atlanta is known as a man's town and has been for most of its short, supercharged life. The day of the glorious individual woman -- the artist, the scientist, the CEO, the glittering maverick -- is only just dawning."


About the Author
Anne River Siddons was born in 1936 in Fairburn, Georgia, a small railroad town just south of Atlanta, where her family has lived for six generations. The only child of a prestigious Atlanta lawyer and his wife, Siddons was raised to be a perfect Southern belle. Growing up, she did what was expected of her: getting straight A's, becoming head cheerleader, the homecoming queen, and then Centennial Queen of Fairburn. At Auburn University she studied illustration, joined the Tri-Delt sorority, and "did the things I thought I should. I dated the right guys. I did the right activities," and wound up voted "Loveliest of the Plains."During her student years at Auburn, the Civil Rights Movement first gained national attention, with the bus boycott in Montgomery and the integration of the University of Alabama. Siddons was a columnist for the Auburn Plainsman at the time, and she wrote, "an innocuous, almost sophomoric column" welcoming integration. The school's administration requested she pull it, and when she refused, they ran it with a disclaimer stating that the university did not share her views. Because she was writing from the deep South, her column gained instant national attention and caused quite "a fracas." When she wrote a second, similarly-minded piece, she was fired. It was her first taste of the power of the written word.After graduation, she worked in the advertising department of a large bank, doing layout and design. But she soon discovered her real talents lay in writing, as she was frequently required to write copy for the advertisements. "At Auburn, and before that when I wrote local columns for the Fairburn paper, writing came so naturally that I didn't value it. I never even thought that it might be a livelihood, or a source of great satisfaction. Southern girls, remember, were taught to look for security." She soon left the bank to join the staff of the recently founded Atlanta magazine. Started by renowned mentor, Jim Townsend, the Atlanta came to life in the 1960's, just as the city Atlanta was experiencing a rebirth. As one of the magazine's first senior editors, Siddons remembers the job as being, "one of the most electrifying things I have ever done in terms of sheer joy." Her work at the magazine brought her in direct contact with the Civil Rights Movement, often sitting with Dr. King's people at the then-black restaurant Carrousel, listening to the best jazz the city had to offer. At age 30, she married Heyward Siddons, eleven years her senior, and the father of four sons from a previous marriage.Her writing career took its next leap when Larry Ashmead, then an editor at Doubleday, noticed an article of hers and wrote to her asking if she would consider doing a book. She assumed the letter was a prank, and that some of her friends had stolen Doubleday stationary. When she didn't respond, Ashmead tracked her down, and Siddons ended up with a two book contract: a collection of essays which became John Chancellor Makes Me Cry, and a novel of her college days, which became Heartbreak Hotel, and was later turned into a film, Heart of Dixie, starring Ally Sheedy.As Ashmead moved on, from Doubleday to Simon & Shuster, then to Harper & Row, Siddons followed, writing a horror story, The House Next Door, which Stephen King described as a prime example of "the new American Gothic," and then Fox's Earth and Homeplace, about the loss of a beloved home.It was in 1988, with the publication of her fifth book, the best-selling Peachtree Road, that Siddons graduated to real commercial success. Described by her friend and peer, Pat Conroy, as "the Southern novel for our generation." With almost a million copies in print, Peachtree Road ushered Siddons onto the literary fast track. Since then the novels have been coming steadily, about one each year, with her readership and writer's fees increasing commensurately. In 1992 she received $3.25 million from HarperCollins for a three book deal, and then, in 1994, HarperCollins gave Siddons $13 million for a four book deal. Now, she and her Heyward shuttle between a sprawling home in Brookhaven, Atlanta, and their summer home in Brooklin, Maine. She finds Down East, "such a relief after the old dark morass of the South. It's like getting a gulp of clean air...I always feel in Maine like I'm walking on the surface of the earth. In the South, I always feel like I'm knee-deep." But she still remains tied to her home in the South, where she does most of her writing. Each morning, Siddons dresses, puts on her makeup and then heads out to the backyard cottage that serves as her office. And each night, she and her husband edit the day's work by reading it aloud over evening cocktails. Siddons' success has naturally brought comparisons with another great Southern writer, Margaret Mitchell, but Siddons insists that the South she writes about is not the romanticized version found in Gone With the Wind. Instead, her relationship with the South is loving, but realistic. "It's like an old marriage or a long marriage. The commitment is absolute, but the romance has long since worn off...I want to write about it as it really is: I don't want to romanticize it."

ANNOTATION

Smoky O'Donnel arrives in Atlanta in 1966 to work as a writer with Atlanta's Downtown magazine. From the remarkable men who change her life to the great social movements sweeping the nation, Smoky's world creates a powerful story of the end of innocence. From the bestselling author of Colony and Hill Towns.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Set on the cusp of the country's great social movements - youth, women's, peace, and civil rights - in the year before the love turned to anger and the peace to militancy, Downtown is the story of Smoky O'Donnell, her career and her heart. When Smoky arrives in Atlanta in 1966, after an airless lifetime back in Savannah, she is at once thrilled and chastened by this dazzling, hectic young city on the move. Atlanta is one of the first cities to have its own magazine, called Downtown, for which Smoky has been specially chosen to work as a writer. In her heart she knows it is a job that will change her life. With breathtaking quickness it introduces her to many unforgettable people - not least among them the magazine's flamboyant and utterly charismatic editor, Matthew Comfort, who helps shape many careers, including hers. Smoky soon meets Bradley Hunt III, the charming and substantial scion of an aristocratic Southern family who invites her into a world more polished and remote than any she has known. As spring comes to Atlanta, she finds herself in the company of Lucas Geary, a gifted young photographer with a rebel's heart. Through the summer, their work takes them deep into the hot, restless streets, and he shows her another world she's never seen - a world populated by shuffling hopelessness, where she meets John Howard, an enigmatic young black man who is a lawyer, freedom fighter, and hero in the civil rights movement, standing at a great moral crossroads. The choices Smoky must face, and her ultimate decisions, create a tender, joyous, and powerful story of the end of innocence - both Smoky's and America's - at a time when traditional values are in question and the air is full of possibility. Full of the masterful characterizations, probing insight, and lyrical prose for which Anne Rivers Siddons is justly acclaimed, Downtown is another stunning achievement from an extraordinary writer.

FROM THE CRITICS

BookList - Donna Seaman

Siddons has had a solid winning streak with her seductive portrayals of plucky southern gals holding their own in alien territory, so she's stayed with a sure thing: Smoky O'Donnell is a pretty, curvaceous shanty Irishwoman straight from the docks of Savannah. Smoky is an anomaly in her small, angry world: a young woman with ambition, talent, and a wide-open mind. It's 1966, and change is in the air, especially in the newly glamorous mecca of Atlanta. Smoky is lucky; she's been invited to join the chummy staff of a hip little city magazine. Blunt, determined, and passionate, she soon finds herself caught between two extremes: the wealthy, Waspish power elite and the volatile civil-rights movement. Siddons devotes a lot of ink to describing the conflicting dynamics of this time and place and often seems overwhelmed by material we sense is close to her heart. In fact, for the first 100 pages or so, she seems to be driving with the brakes on. When she does let loose, she treats us to some irresistible romance as well as an unusual, if cursory, dramatization of the struggle between the Black Panthers and followers of Martin Luther King, Jr. What's intriguing about Siddons is how much she transcends the usual parameters of fluff fiction, both in terms of literary finesse and penetrating intelligence. Although this isn't quite up to the caliber of her last book, "Hill Towns" , it's still a rewarding and bound-to-be-popular page-turner.

AudioFile - Barbara Valle