Just Like That. By Gary D. Schmidt.

Meryl Lee who attends a private all-girls preparatory high school has the year of her life. Her parents decide to do a legal separation during her first year at her new school and now things are becoming as clear as a bell. Although - she is so busy with her new life and really has no time to sob about an abandonment issue she does wish that her parents would had made a more formative and polite and 'respectful of her person' as an individual, let alone as a human being way of announcing some adult relationship issues. "But that wasn't all she would have to figure out. Over Christmas vacation, Meryl Lee had learned what she did not want to learn when she went into her parents' bedroom and saw that everything that belonged to her father was gone - his suits, his ties, the photograph of the two of them in Quebec City he always had on his dresser - all gone, and she suddenly knew why her parents had not come up for her at Thanksgiving and why her father had not come up for her birthday and to bring her home at Christmas and what the legal appointments were about and why her father was away for the holidays."

Then one day during history class, Dr. MacKnockater had to replace Mrs. Saunders who had a cold. The teaching for the day was supposed to be about Eleanor Roosevelt. Her best friend Ella had been one of the first women in New York to vote after women won the vote in New York where she came from. During the lecture Dr. MacKnockater broke out in a solo chorus of 'Votes for Women' and she soon had all of the young women in the class joining in to sing the song which followed the same melody as 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic.'

  "Ye men who wrong your mothers,

  And your wives and sisters, too,

  How dare you rob companions

  Who are always brave and true?

  How dare you make them servants

  Who are all the world to you?

  As they go marching on?

  Men and brothers, dare you do it?

  Men and brothers, dare you do it?

  As we go marching on?"

It is the 1960's and some of the professors are also upset about losing young men to death during the war in Vietnam. Meryl Lee even befriends an older young woman whose brother is in Vietnam and whose father rushes home to watch television each day as a psychological way to make sure his son stays alive or to find out if he is among the dead or wounded young men fighting that war. However, the school is situated near a beach and that gives Meryl Lee a lot of comfort. She is a serious student and very scholarly and her books and reading mean more to her than social life among the various groups of girls who seem more outgoing. She manages to befriend most of her teachers. After all, she is par to that academic level. The friendship she begins to develop with one of her favorite instructor's even gets her an invite for an otherwise very lonely Thanksgiving day.

Also, because she met a boy. "Meryl Lee got up to seven skips that afternoon - not counting the one that went into the wave, which he wouldn't give her, no matter what she said. And for the first time that day, and maybe for the first time in many days, Meryl Lee did not feel the Blank behind her. All she wanted was to be thinking of nothing else except throwing flat stones into the waves with this boy, to count the skips, to imagine the stones slowly sliding through the cold water to the bottom and resting. And something familiar came to her, as if she could remember how it felt to have her heart inside her chest."

There are a lot of interesting characters whom Calvin University Grand Rapids English professor and author of the book, Gary D. Schmidt presents us with here. For starters, there is Coach Rowlandson who helps Meryl Lee find her proper sport calling through soccer after being advised to give up on hockey and the elder African American preacher and his wife who reach out to help a young teenager in trouble and then there are the clam chowder diner owners who feed a host of fishermen on a regular basis. The teachers at Meryl's private school who although seem somewhat old school and reserved and conservative are really all heart when it comes to the young women at the academy. Actually the teachers represented in the book are very conscientious. They truly care about the best development of the young women and their career preparation in general. But Meryl Lee is about to have the adventure of her life. She soon forgets about her parents and begins to focus on her own future and thoughts about how she will make a living and a way for herself.

"And Charlotte - who was indeed wearing an orange scarf with a peach blouse - was looking pretty pouty until Jennifer opened a drawer and pulled out a light green scarf." "This will be perfect with your eye coloring," she said. Then Charlotte smiled and Ashley said Jennifer ought to know since she's traveled so much in Europe and Jennifer smiled - "Don't make me blush," she said - and she wrapped the scarf around Charlotte and they all giggled and hugged. And then Jennifer said she was dying, just dying, just absolutely dying, to tell Ashley and Charlotte about Alden and maybe, since she couldn't reveal their secrets, she could tell them instead about what they were all going to do at Christmas. Would they like to know?"