Suze Rotolo reads from A Freewheelin� Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties (Broadway Books, 2008)

A Freewheelin’ Time is Suze Rotolo’s firsthand account of Greenwich Village in the early 1960s and her relationship with Bob Dylan. Rotolo grew up during the Cold War and McCarthyism as the daughter of Italian working-class Communists from Queens. As a teenager, she met new friends in Greenwich Village who, like her, were interested in the arts and politically active. Then in July 1961, 17-year-old Rutolo met 20-year-old Dylan, a rising young musician. While they were together, Dylan was transformed from an obscure folk singer into an uneasy spokesperson for a generation. Rotolo recounts the story of her sweet but sometimes wrenching love affair and its eventual collapse under the pressures of growing fame. She also writes about her involvement with the civil rights movement and the sometimes frustrating experience of being a woman in a male-dominated culture. A Freewheelin’ Time is a vibrant, moving memoir of the excitement of youth, the heartbreak of young love, and of a vital subculture at its most creative.