Playback

Witty, touching, and insightful, Playback revisits the 17-year-old Mari Caldwell of Shine Until Tomorrow, now 34, to tell the story of a woman obsessed with the past who must risk the future to learn to live in the present

“Once upon a time there was a summer.”

That’s the way the bedtime story starts, the one Mari Caldwell tells her little girl. It’s also her secret story of waking up one day in San Francisco, 1967, having time-traveled to the tie-dyed Summer of Love.

But she was seventeen then. Now, at 34, where Mari once saw 60’s idealism, she now sees only disillusionment. Newly divorced and stuck in a settled-for career, Mari’s failed at giving her child the perfect family she’d envisioned. That weird weekend in the sixties— the rock band she crashed with, the musician she loved, the hit song he wrote for her— lives in the way-back of her mind. Did it even happen? She’s not so sure… Until it happens again.

Playback rewinds Mari’s life as she makes a second visit to Haight-Ashbury in 1967, now autumn. The band, Mari’s rival, and her first love all see the 17-year-old girl they met in June. But inside, adult Mari faces both tender and devastating choices. What if, regardless of how the times have a-changed, love changes everything after all? What if it even changes her?

© 2025 Rare Bird Books (Ebook): 9781644285398

Release date

Ebook: August 12, 2025