I love Katrina Jackson’s writing, and her 2021 novella, Back in the Day, is one of my favorite pieces of writing in any genre. I finally bought the audiobook version narrated by Jakobi Diem. His narration is perfect, and he found new ways for this book to make me cry. I really didn’t think I could fall more in love with Jackson’s writing, but the richness Diem brought to her words proved me wrong. I am literally crying right now just thinking about the way he took words I already love and gave them more depth.
Back in the Day shifts between 2010 and the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. In 2010 Amir is helping his father Alonzo pack up the family home so that Alonzo can move in with Amir. Alonzo’s enormous record collection is a sticking point between them, so Amir asks his father to explain why they must keep every record. Alonzo goes back to running late to meet the photographer he’s been paired with to cover the Monterey Pop Festival for he Village Voice. The photographer is Ada, and the weekend changes their lives. Alonzo’s story of falling in love with Ada while the two bond over their love of music is interspersed with examining the fruit of their life life together. Ada died a few years before the book opens, but she is present in the house, the community, and in Amir and his sister Amaya.
After she died, Amir had gone through Ada’s work, trying to discover some hidden depths of her through her work. What he’d found was no surprise. Ada had loved to photograph Alonzo because she had loved him with her entire soul. Her cameras had captured her husband — the depth of him, all his kindness and promise and beauty and softness — because she saw him that way. Their love was all over Ada’s photography. The body of her work was a testament to the life she’d built with him.
I don’t want to get into the whole is it a romance question, because it just makes me want to fight people in a parking lot. So I’ll quote what I said in 2022 when I reviewed several of Katrina Jackson’s books together:
Back in the Day stretches the boundaries of the romance genre. For some people it may be a stretch too far, for me it was not, because the romantic relationship was still central and the HEA happened. Jackson isn’t trying to subvert those genre conventions, she is exploring them from a slightly different angle. The romance between Ada and Alonzo is told in retrospect 5 years after her death as Alonzo and Amir are packing up the house they raised their family in. Alonzo and Ada had their happily ever after – happily married for the rest of Ada’s life and successfully raised two kids to adulthood. Not that marriage and children are required for a happily ever after. Jackson shows us the evidence of their happy life through the memories her family and community share, through the ugly dolls and photographs she left behind.
I remain absolutely bewildered that more people aren’t reading Katrina Jackson. The fact that this novella only has 47 reviews on goodreads is a crime. If you want to do something nice for yourself, go get this, print or audio version, but audio version if you really love yourself.