More than any previous novel, the details of Downtown mirror the facts of Anne Rivers Siddons' own life. Siddons got her start as a staff writer for Atlanta magazine, one of America's first city magazines. Founded by Jim Townsend, a revered mentor to a whole generation of Atlanta writers, the magazine came to life in the exciting decade of the '60s, when the city was emerging as a political center for the Civil Rights Movement and redefining itself as the South's metropolis of the future. Downtown captures the energy of the city at this turning point. "Before the '60s, there was no doubt that the pristine insularity of Atlanta would hold," Siddons explains. "Then, hordes of young people infiltrated the city and two worlds just jammed against each other, like tectonic plates. In Downtown, I tried to capture the feeling that everything was about to change. It was very powerful." Borrowing its title from the Petula Clark song as well as the name of the city magazine where Smoky works, Downtown weaves in the sights and sounds of a generation redefining itself. Far from her Irish Catholic family in Savannah and outside the stately tudor mansions of Atlanta's wealthy Buckhead community, Smoky discovers a world of shiny white vinyl, Motown, and the birth control pill. By the surprising end of Downtown, "The Atlanta I had come in search of" is a distant memory for Smoky. Unlike her protagonist, Siddons still calls Atlanta home after thirty years, though she speaks of the changes there with mixed emotions. Writing about Atlanta for Lear's magazine, Siddons said "A woman can make a name for herself here that shine son many shores. Woman can, and some do, create and topple personal empires here... but they do so in ruffles... Atlanta is known as a man's town and has been for most of it's short, supercharged life. The day of the glorious individual woman -- the artist, the scientist, the CEO, the glittering maverick -- is only just dawning..."

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