Seventeenth Summer

Daly, Maureen. Seventeenth Summer. New York City: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1942.

In the summer just after graduation from high school Angie, a quiet girl, sees handsome Jack Duluth at a local hangout. While she does not date, Angie finds herself thinking about Jack quite a bit. Jack’s father owns the local bakery and stops by to make a delivery one afternoon and asks Angie to spend some time with him that evening. Angie finds herself self-conscious and feeling a bit awkward on the date comparing herself to other girls she thinks that Jack may find attractive. Even so, Jack asks her to accompany her to a dance and it is there that Jack confesses how much he likes Angie and they kiss. Over the summer, Angie and Jack have a falling out, but once the pair talk they are inseparable. As time passes, Angie begins to question the strength of the feelings she is having, thinking they are too advanced for someone her age, finding herself falling in love with Jack. The end of the summer looms over them, for Angie will be leaving their Wisconsin town for school in Chicago, when Jack reveals he will be returning to Oklahoma with the rest of his family. Bittersweet and honest, Jack and Angie leave each other at the train station with Angie thinking to herself that there would “never be a summer as sweet as [her] seventeenth.”

Maureen Daly began work on Seventeenth Summer while she was still in college, which gives the novel a different feel than if an adult, completely removed from childhood, would have written the work. Daly also sets the novel in an area close to where she herself grew up, providing her the opportunity to give delightful and detailed descriptions of the lake and countryside of Angie and Jack’s hometown. The author describes the smell and taste of the summer, truly drawing in the reader to the surroundings in which Angie and her family reside. In fact, the background could easily be considered another character in the story, it is so well developed.

The story itself is written in a style reminiscent to a diary – this technique lends itself well to the narration given to the reader by Angie. Sometimes written in desperate tones, the reader feels as if they are the only one who understand how deeply Angie feels, following her through elation, disappointment, wanting, needing, anger and desire. Although the story takes place in the early 1940’s, Angie’s story reads reminiscent of many young women’s first love tales. Angie struggle to understand love and finding contentment in a relationship can be understood regardless of the generation gaps between modern day teens and 1940’s teens. The New York Times noted that the novel is “both a timeless romance and a period piece, making it an utterly enchanting book – one which rings true and sweet and fresh and sound.” Some of the terminology and struggles that the characters face (Angie wonders if it makes her seem “fast” to be kissing Jack so soon, which is something that a modern day teen may think is very old-fashioned) are going to seem foreign to the reader, but in the end, the story is about two teenagers finding first, true love, something with which any reader can identify.

Book cover can be found at http://maureendaly.com/?attachment_id=4