In the fourth volume of a series set in Minneapolis in the 1960s, three friends navigate relationships and new questions about love and identityAfter three years of high school, Margaret still isnt any closer to what she wants: to sing and dance on Broadway, to be a model like Twiggy, to be madly in love with someone other than Paul McCartney. Its not much to ask, but with her friends Grace and Isabelle shes willing to adjust her goals for the summer to a job, a car, and a boyfriend.When Grace gets a job downtown at the Emerald Cafe, where Teddy, a dreamy college kid, tends the meat buffet, it looks like she, at least, is almost halfway thereuntil Teddy asks for Margarets phone number. Normal might not be all its cracked up to be (high school graduation, marriage, and housewifery, really?), but as Teddy complicates the girls friendship, it slowly becomes apparent that normal might mean something different, and infinitely trickier, to him. As the old friends, with adulthood looming, navigate the newly confusing territory of love and sexuality and identity, everything they thought they knew is suddenly, frighteningly thrown into questionand they discover that between the dream of stardom and the certainty of housekeeping theres a vast unsuspected world of peril and possibility.With all the tenderness, heartache, and humor of her earlier novels about Margaret, Grace, and Isabelle, in Whatever Normal Is Jane St. Anthony takes the friends, and her readers, to a place beyond normalto a future as satisfying as it is promising.

 

 

This book is aimed at children at US 8th grade-10th grade.

This book has been graded for interest at 12-17 years.

There are 160 pages in this book.

It is aimed at Young Adult readers. The term Young Adult (YA) is used for books which have the following characteristics: (1) aimed at ages 12-18 years, US grades 7-12, UK school years 8-15, (2) around 50-75k words long, (3) main character is aged 12-18 years, (4) topics include self-reflection, internal conflict vs external, analyzing life and its meaning, (5) point of view is often in the first person, and (6) swearing, violence, romance and sexuality are allowed.

This book was published in 2019 by University of Minnesota Press .

Jane St. Anthony is the author of The Summer Sherman Loved Me and Grace Above All . She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.