Publisher Description
Eleanor H. Porter’s most famous literary creation is Pollyanna, but she isn’t the only precocious young girl to spring from the author’s pen. Mary Marie Anderson describes herself as “a cross-current and a contradiction", the offspring of incompatible parents who couldn’t even agree about her name. When the two divorce when she is thirteen, Mary Marie is delighted since she’s always liked being different. None of the other girls have two homes and spend six months with each parent! Father will remain in their small town and mother will live in Boston with her family.
This exciting development persuades Mary Marie to keep a diary that she plans to turn into a novel. Surely one of her parents will remarry and provide the romance to spice up her story. But adolescence is not an easy time of life, and harsh reality intervenes when she discovers that 1920s America is not always tolerant of divorce. Overtime, being fun-loving Marie in the city and sober Mary in the country becomes confusing and wears thin. She’s always liked being different, but not being two different girls! Worst of all, why can’t either of her parents find someone new and turn her novel into a love story?
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About Eleanor H. Porter
Eleanor Hodgman Porter (1868–1920), American novelist, was born at Littleton, New Hampshire, and studied music at the New England Conservatory. Her first novels included Cross Currents (1907) and Miss Billy (1911). In 1913 Pollyanna appeared, which was an immediate success that has retained its popularity ever since. A sequel, Pollyanna Grows Up, was published in 1915, and two volumes of short stories, The Tangled Threads and Across the Years, appeared posthumously in 1924.