The book that started it all—fifty years ago!

Meet Snowy and her wide circle of friends, growing up in the post-World War II era of rigidly-defined roles for women. While Snowy yearns for the social success that a small-town high school can offer, her ambitions extend past that, toward the personal success that only a good college education can bring. In THE CHEERLEADER, you'll begin an adventure with the engaging, 

enduring characters whose stories continue, over subsequent titles in Ruth Doan MacDougall’s Snowy Series, into contemporary times. 

Searchingly honest, achingly real, THE CHEERLEADER recalls all the joy, excitement, and pain of crossing the bridge from childhood to young womanhood in the Fabulous Fifties, when sex was still a mystery and goals were clearly defined—perhaps for the last time.

Ruth briefly describes how THE CHEERLEADER came to be here.

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Frigate Books offers autographed copies, no sales tax, and free shipping.
To read online, select the e-book version compatible with your app.

Our Silent Generation has dropped out of sight between our parents’ generation and the baby boomers. Nobody knows about us."

But you will know!

Fans of Snowy and Bev and Puddles, Tom, Dudley, the twins, and all the Gang from Gunthwaite High School will thoroughly enjoy this next stage of our beloved characters' lives, as they turn fifty and—eek!—sixty as the millennium approaches. How do they adjust to their limitations, deal with grief, and face the realization that this may be their last chance at love, success, and happiness? 

Said one reader, "This is a CHEERLEADER fan's dream book, answering almost every 'What if...?' and 'What ever happened to...?' question we could have had. But more than just an extended reunion with characters I adore, the story itself is fabulous—a great and wonderful treat for people like me, who've loved Snowy for decades now."

PURCHASE OPTIONS:

Frigate Books offers autographed copies, no sales tax, and free shipping.
To read online, select the e-book version compatible with your app.

Puddles may have been born in Maine, but where are her real roots? She spent her teens in New Hampshire and her married life in South Carolina. Did she establish roots in these states to which she was transplanted?  Or has she truly been a displaced person all these years? 

The most uninhibited of THE CHEERLEADER’s three friends, intrepid Puddles was leading a settled life when a trip to visit Maine relatives becomes her route to adventure involving an island, a castle, hard decisions, and rebirth. 

From the foreword by Ann Norton Holbrook: Puddles is “just as hilarious as when she chased Snowy around a 1950s Woolworth’s with giant underwear.” 

PURCHASE OPTIONS:

Frigate Books offers autographed copies, no sales tax, and free shipping.
To read an e-version select the e-book version compatible with your app.

"Site fidelity" is an ornithological term for birds' instinctive migration back to their place of origin. But what Snowy wants is another site, a fresh start. Woodcombe, the New Hampshire town in which she has lived for twenty years, and Gunthwaite, her nearby hometown, now seem to her like prisons. She is confined by her surroundings and memories, by family and financial worries, by her work at her general store, and she hankers for what she calls a Maine-style Bali Ha’i, an island she has visited with her friend Puddles, where the scenery is “the ever-changing ocean, not the motionless mountains.” How can she escape?

Is this longing for change a part of aging? How can she leave the responsibilities that tie her down? A medical challenge provides an unexpected opportunity, and Snowy finds new profoundness in those ancient words “for better or worse, in sickness and in health.”

PURCHASE OPTIONS:

Frigate Books offers autographed copies, no sales tax, and free shipping.
To read an e-version, select the e-book version compatible with your app.