Perfect Family

by Jerrie Oughton

Overview

Welcome Marie O'Neal is finally starting to enjoy her 15th year and can't wait to turn 16. She meets Nicholas Canton and, though her parents don't approve, the two start dating. Soon Welcome is head over heels in love and she can't believe it won't last forever. But the romance ends with the summer and when things fall apart, Welcome finds herself confused, heartbroken, and...in trouble. There aren't many people Welcome can turn to for help or advice in her small Southern town in 1955, especially not in her "perfect" family. The decisions Welcome has to make will change her life forever.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780544003026
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	03/29/2012
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
Lexile:	670L (what's this?)
File size:	371 KB
Age Range:	10 - 12 Years

About the Author

Jerrie Oughton has written several novels for young adults. Her first, Music From a Place Called Half Moon. was awarded the Bank Street College Children's Book Award. She lives with her husband in Lexington, Kentucky.

Editorial Reviews

It's 1955 in the town of Lily, North Carolina. Unwed teen mothers are shuttled off to far away cities; girls are going crazy over James Dean; and "porch setting" is a viable pastime. The illusion of a perfect family is shattered in the O'Neal household when 15-year-old Welcome falls in love with handsome Nicholas Canton, a Northerner unfamiliar with the Southern lifestyle, and her older sister, Evelyn Sue, runs away to California to find her romantic hero, James Dean. Welcome hurries to lose her virginity to a close friend, Randy Newsome, after attending a square dance with Nicholas, who becomes inebriated and flirts with wild girls. Pregnant at 15, Welcome has no other choice than to be shipped off to her Aunt Lacey and Uncle Mac's home in Virginia Beach. On the bus ride and in their home, she learns the real meaning of love, giving up the son she's named Adam to her Aunt and Uncle to raise while she returns to Lily to complete her high school education and attend medical school. The unbending, hard-line values of the '50s and Southern setting are clearly portrayed in this novel about making poor choices, owning up to the consequences, and having the fortitude to set the record straight. (Fiction. 12-14)

Kirkus Reviews