WHAT SAMMY KNEW is a fast-paced turbulent coming-of-age novel about Sammy Stein a young man who loses his innocence and finds his soul in the ferment of New York City in 1970.

On the brink of a new decade, as the radical 1960s turns to the 1970s, seventeen-year-old Sammy Stein is about to grow up in a hurry. Raised in a cushy Long Island suburb where his parents consign him to the care of Tutu Carter, their live-in housekeeper, Sam is learning uncomfortable truths about his place and privilege in his relationship with Tutu and in the world. When he stumbles into a New Year’s party and meets firebrand Kim Goodman, his life is changed forever. In short order, he falls in love and flees with her to the drug-soaked East Village of Manhattan, and gets swept up in the revolutionary political movements of the time.

An aspiring writer, Sam bears witness to the seismic upheavals of the day while remaining utterly blind to a high-stakes plot that Kim and her comrades are executing right under his nose. As seemingly unrelated events click into place, what Sammy knew and what Sammy didn’t know become matters of life and death—not only for himself and Kim, but for Tutu and her grandson Leon in Harlem, and for the radical protest movement teetering between disillusion and revolution. Compulsively readable, peopled by unforgettable characters, crackling with wit and suspense, WHAT SAMMY KNEW brilliantly evokes a chaotic, dangerously polarized, and historically important moment in America.

WHAT SAMMY KNEW: A Novel, By David Laskin(Penguin Books Hardcover Original / 9780143135500 / March 16, 2021 / $26.00)

“[A] timely coming of age story…that will thrill the casual reader and appease the literary critic… Laskin’s writing moves quickly and generates excitement at just the right moments, and… contains descriptive turns of phrase that stand out for their elegance.”—Harvard Crimson, Daniel S. de Castro

“an engaging story…Tutu is a splendidly realized character who alone makes the novel worth reading.” —Booklist

“Laskin’s narrative captures it all—the fervor, the drugs, the sex, the politics, the magic, the tragedy of the 60s and 70s and most of all the angst of that wonderful, terrible time. A fun, transporting, and evocative read.”—Daniel James Brown, New York Times bestselling author of The Boys in the Boat

“David Laskin enlivens the compelling urgency and confusion of the 1960s and 70s in Samuel Stein, a smart young man coming of age on Long Island, who turns his back on his family in pursuit of love, only to find that love resides in humility, and often much closer to home than we realize.” —Robin Oliveira, New York Times bestselling author of Winter Sisters

“A powerful coming-of-age novel that’s shockingly contemporary and undeniably relevant. Both brilliantly complex and relentlessly page-turning, devastating and tender.” —Deb Caletti, National Book Award Nominee author of Honey, Baby, Sweetheart

“An engrossing, timely, beautifully written book, WHAT SAMMY KNEW reveals the perils of coming-of-age in a country fraught with instability, inequality, distrust, and strife.” —Julie Barton, New York Times bestselling author of Dog Medicine

“Irresistible. The story begins with teenage lust and humor but swiftly turns to idealism and recklessness en route to its exciting climax.” —Jim Lynch, bestselling author of The Highest Tide

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: DAVID LASKIN is the critically acclaimed author of The Family and The Children’s Blizzard, which won the Washington State Book Award and Midwest Booksellers’ Choice Award for nonfiction. The author of several other works of nonfiction, Laskin writes for The New York Times and The Washington Post. He and his wife, the parents of three grown daughters, live in Seattle.