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Margaret Maze Craig,
1951, Thomas Y. Crowell
“I wonder,” Pat said
suddenly, and the tone of her voice was an odd combination of resentment and
wistfulness, “how it would feel to be Connie Hyde.”
High school seniors Patricia Ingram and her best friend Mary Jo Tucker are
not popular. They’re not unpopular – Pat
has a lovelorn male neighbor she doesn’t want, and neither girl is an outcast -
but they want more. At least, Pat does. She’s spent her high school career existing
on the fringe of the effortless cool clique run by sleek, poised girls like the
famous Connie, and she wants that world. Mary Jo, slightly wiser, suggests there might
be aspects to that world Pat hasn’t considered, but Pat has a big reason to
ignore this advice – she’s in love with a boy from that group.
Dick Keating – tall,
rugged senior. Stubby, biscuit-brown hair and short, thick eyelashes of the
same incredible color. Hazel eyes. Lips a trifle full perhaps, but lips that
turned up engagingly at the corners when he smiled. Very white teeth, just a little crooked. A casual way of wearing clothes, an easy
nonchalance of manner. Dick Keating –
the central figure in all her daydreams, and Connie Hyde’s exclusive property!
A chance meeting draws Dick’s attention to the slightly
innocent Pat, and the novelty of a girl who isn’t smooth and jaded keeps his
interest. Astonished, Pat is thrilled to
begin dating him. From the start,
though, she’s never sure where she stands with Dick, or how he’s going to fall
between his interest in her unsophisticated charms and the allure of the
familiar Connie. Later, she begins to
see that his interest in her has awakened something else in him, a possibility
that he might not just love her but that he might be able to change into the person
she thought he was – a boy with values like her own, rather than a boy from a
social group that to Pat seems racy and vulgar.
And then the book whips around, introduces a college boy
with a bad reputation who falls instantly in love with Pat and destroys her
relationship with Dick by creating (unwittingly) a situation where it seems
they’ve had sex.
The last quarter of the book is jarring, and while the
resolution between Pat and her flawed prince was believable, the way the book
arrives at that resolution is baffling.
Introducing a major character that late, making their relationship that
powerful, and writing out Pat’s friends so quickly were all odd choices. Otherwise, a nicely written teen romance.
About the Author
Margaret Maze Craig (1911-1964)
Craig was born and lived in Pennsylvania. She was married and had 2 children, and
worked as a home economics teacher.
Etc.
The dedication reads "For my mother, La Belle Sutton Maze."
Other Books by Author
Julie (1952)
Marsha (1955)
Three Who Met (1958)
Now That I'm Sixteen (1959)
It Could Happen To Anyone (1961)
Other Editions
