Set in Florida during the wild, fast-living days of the 1920s prohibition and land rush, this is the story of Maggie Murphy’s baptism by fire as a newspaper reporter. Her spirited bid to write for the front pages is repeatedly thwarted by local prejudice about a woman’s place, and Maggie finds herself angrily counting the roses on bridal bouquets for the society news instead. With scandals brewing among the town’s most respectable elite, Maggie soon makes inspired use of the ladies’ page, however, and turns the town’s silk purses out for the veritable sow’s ears they are.
This story of a gallant young woman whose energy and determination overcome, among other things, her own hilarious awkwardness is written in a style, rare these days of mass communication, that preserves a true regional integrity.
May McNeer, like the fictional Maggie, grew up in the south and aspired to be a journalist. She was raised by her mother and an aunt, identical twin sisters, who were “as much part of the old south as lineage and pride together could produce” who were also “given to picking up and moving suddenly on impulse. As a result, Ms. McNeer saw much of the southeast during her early life. Eventually she enrolled in the University of Georgia and later went on to study at the school of journalism at Columbia university.
May McNeer and Lynn Ward have worked together as an award winning team on a number of books for young readers — My Friend Mac, Stranger in the Pines and Up a Crooked River, among others. In 1975, they were awarded the Catholic Library Association’s Regina Medal for their continued distinguished contribution to children’s literature.
