The Cheerleader
"One of the truest portraits of an American girl ever written...Everything works in MacDougall's book.  She captures the times, the attitudes, the emotions with the authority of one who was once there and knows the route back by heart."--Detroit Free Press"It's heartbreaking at times, hilarious at others, and she's got it all down beautifully."--Philadelphia Inquirer"In earlier novels Ruth Doan MacDougall has shown that if you bring an uncommon mind and talent to the commonplace what you are likely to get is not the commonplace but the uncommon.  Now she has used that mind and talent to deal with one of the major communal democratic experiences shared by Americans--going to high school...I can't recall a novel in which high-school-age youngsters appear which seems to reproduce so naturally their way of talking and in fact their whole demeanor and style of living.  Nor have I recently encountered a more appealing young heroine than Snowy...If future historians and sociologists are ever impelled to find out what it was like to be a high school student in America at mid 20th century, they will need go no farther thanThe Cheerleaderfor documentation and enlightenment...Utterly honest, accurate and sympathetic."--Kansas City Star"The author has captured firsthand the standards and traditions of the Fifties...You will be terrifically entertained."--Chattanooga Times"A quite remarkable novel...Pinpoints so accurately the personal trauma of teenage girls growing up."--Camden, N.J.,Courier-Post"The first love affair is neatly and sensitively handled, the dialogue absolutely right, the adolescents are as they have always been."--Cleveland Plain Dealer"Great nostalgic touches."--Chicago Tribune"No one who was there could fault her--MacDougall holds a mirror up to the Fifties and comes away with a true reflection."--Fort Worth Star-Telegram"A devastatingly accurate portrait of the '50s."--Library Journal"It isn't often that you get to the last page of a book and are aware that you have just finished a real reading experience.  But that's how you'll feel when you finishThe Cheerleader.  A terrific book.  Really terrific."--United Press International"Read it if you can bear to remember it."--Alix Kates Shulman, author ofMemoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen"Painfully authentic...Ruth Doan MacDougall'sThe Cheerleadercaptures as well as any book I've read the feeling of being in  high school."--Ralph Keyes, author ofIs There Life after High School?--Across the nation the critics cheerThe Cheerleader