I’m hoping you can help me with the name and author of a book I started reading in 1996/97 as a teenager. I was about 1/4 of the way through it (it was a very large book if I recall) and was quite enjoying it…until my mother confiscated it because it wasn’t “church approved” 🙄 It was the story of a young boy in the 50’s. On the cover was a picture of an Edsel. The story sort of centralized on that car, and I *think* the father worked at the Edsel factory. There were a lot of coming of age themes, and I’ve never forgotten that book and wish to finish it now that I have my own teenagers. The author was a male, and he had multiple other books that I cannot remember either.
Could it be Jackdog Summer by Geoffrey Clark? Published in January 1996, so it would have been new when you read it.
https://www.worldcat.org/title/jackdog-summer-a-novel/oclc/36210293
This bibliography titled “Michigan In The Novel” helped me find it – you can launch the ebook and then use ctrl-F to search for Edsel matches.
https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=library_books
Hope this helps!