Another “ID this book from my childhood which I barely remember” thread:
A book I read in the early 80’s, set on Long Island (I think a remember a mention of the Sunrise Highway), a frendship between a boy and a girl, the plot is driven by the death of one of the main character’s parents (car crash?), the book might have been skewed toward female readers…any guesses?
So is it a romance, or just a friendship? Paperback? Trade size? I haven’t found anything, you might try the library using the Novelist database that montag01 mentioned in another thread.
I did find this, Books Set In I’m sure many are not even close, what things make you ‘know’ it’s not the right one, sometimes that helps.
Thanks for the reply, I know it’s a longshot but sometimes people are able to come up with the answer to this sort of thing with amazingly little to go on.
It was a library book - I don’t think pocket/mass market sized paperback - if you put a gun to my head I would say it was hardcover. I grew up on Long Island so don’t know if that has any implications as far as its distribution etc (local author promotion?)
I think there was a bf/gf aspect to the relationship but I wouldn’t say it was a romance, the book was was more about the idea of coping with the death of a parent.
An idea you’ve given me is searching tags on librarything, I’ll give that a shot.
Could it have been by Lois Lowry? Sounds like her style.
Are you totally sure it wasn’t “Tiger Eyes” by Judy Bloom? Written in 1981, it could have been a library hardcover when you got ahold of it. The main character is a girl whose father was killed in a convenience store hold up in Atlantic City, NJ (IIRC you find out what happened in bits and pieces). She meets a boy, somewhat older, whose father is dying of cancer at the hospital where she is a volunteer. There is just a tinge of romantic feeling towards the end; most of the book is on a friendship level.
The big miss is that the majority of book takes place in New Mexico, where the girl, her mom, and her brother are staying with a (restrictive) aunt & uncle. Maybe the portions set in New Jersey could have had references that lead you to think it was LI.
Was the girl’s name Ronnie, and her mother (the widowed wife, dad was killed instantly in a car crash) gave her a bird (maybe a parrot, Ronnie and the boy were teaching it to talk) for Christmas?
Thanks for the suggestions, they are in the ballpark but not quite it (don’t remember anything about specific about Ronnie and/or a parrot - what’s the book you had in mind?)
I grew up on Long Island so that’s one detail I’m sure about (could have been a local author and not a well known book?)
I can’t even find anything that seems close.
Don’t know if you checked here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_references_to_Long_Island_places_in_popular_culture.
I went through the authors/novels, but nothing stood out.
Maybe when you find out what it is, you could update that page for them.
You could try asking over at Goodreads - there’s a group called ‘What’s The Name of That Book???’ which is fairly heavily skewed towards YA.