This book is about the 'ghost years, that time in your life you don't know won't never come again,' as Mrs. Cunningham tells Roy and her son, Tommy. Barry Gifford has been writing the story of America in acclaimed novel after acclaimed novel for the last half-century. Almost all of Ghost Years takes place in the 1950s, and Giffort takes on a difficult time in his personal life as he examines the lives of women in that period - the suppression, the lack of opportunities, the dependency on men.