Although The Eastside of Town is fiction, many experiences in the book are based on actual events. This book allows the sixties' generation a walk down memory lane and all readers a glimpse at a unique time in history. Five friends who grew up on the eastside of Orlando who experienced fathers returning from WWII, the mysteries of girls, Friday night lights, prom, integration, civil rights, assassinations of President Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr., the draft, and the Vietnam War are reunited when Jackie, the girl who taught all of them about passion and compassion, is brutally murdered. Tommy Smith convinces his friends they need to find out what happened to Jackie. This may not have been a good idea.