Joyride

by Betty Cavanna

Crippled by polio, Susan struggles during her four years of high school to come to grips with her handicap and her prospects for the future.

Genres: Historical, Teen

222 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

American juvenile author (full name: Elizabeth Allen) Betty Cavanna suffered from a crippling disease, infantile paralysis, as a child, which she eventually overcame with treatment and exercise. During her convalescence, attentive adults read to her until she was old enough to read to herself, beginning a long love affair with books.

Cavanna majored in journalism at the New Jersey College for Women in New Brunswick, from where she received the Bachelor of Letters degree in 1929. She also took art classes in New York and Philadelphia. Cavanna's first job was as a reporter for the Bayonne Times. In 1931 she joined the staff of the Westminster Press in Philadelphia and over the next ten years served as advertising manager and art director. She also wrote and sold material to Methodist and Baptist publishing firms. In 1940 she married Edward Talman Headley, with whom she had a son. They moved to Philadelphia. After her husband's death, she married George Russell Harrison, a university dean of science, as well as nonfiction writer, in 1957. He died in 1979.

Cavanna became a full-time writer in 1941. Since then she has written more than seventy books under the name of Betty Cavanna as well as two pseudonyms: Betsy Allen, under which she wrote the "Connie Blair Mystery" series, and Elizabeth Headley, under which she wrote several books, including the Diane stories. As Betty Cavanna she also published the nonfiction "Around the World Today" about young people living in various countries.

Cavanna's juvenile fiction, about the difficulties of adolescenc, appealed to generations of teenage girls. Her characters confronted loneliness, sibling rivalries, divorce, and tense mother-daughter relationships. Her books, although characterized as pleasant, conventional, and stereotyped, have been extremely popular and recommended by critics for their attention to subjects which have reflected girls' interests. Going on Sixteen and Secret Passage were Spring Book Festival honor books in 1946 and 1947.

In the 1970s Cavanna turned to writing mysteries, which she termed "escape fiction," because she said she felt out of sync with the problems of modern teenagers. Two of her books have been runners-up for the Edgar Allan Poe Award: Spice Island Mystery in 1970 and the Ghost of Ballyhooly in 1972.

She died in France (2001).

Reviews

[Jenifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have had an old copy of this book on my shelf for over 40 years. I think I kept it because of the interesting cover, and I don’t think I actually ever read it. I find it fascinating in the 2020’s to read a book for girls that is set in the 1920’s, but written in the 1970’s. Lifetimes go by…. I feel like I can understand so well the place that this is coming from. The reader is learning about life 100 years ago from someone who lived 50 years ago. A meta experience for sure! I’m not sure it would be interesting or even understandable to a young girl of today.

Susan, who became lame in one leg as a result of the polio virus is the main character. She has a very cool and fashionable mother and a somewhat clueless dad. She lives in white middle-class comfort in Tennessee. I think Betty Cavanna did a good job demonstrating Susan’s wavering confidence and maturity. She is sometimes passionate, uncertain or confused. She has to cope within the parameters of the time in which she lives. She navigates envy, peer pressure, friends and school.

There are historical markers of the time period and grownup community stuff going on, but Susan seems characteristically unaware of most of it. She has on the blinders of adolescence. I related to her being only peripherally aware and marginally interested in race relations, women’s issues, and world news unless it affected her personally.

This story takes on the hard task of sending Susan on a path that isn’t conventional for the time. I think it did a good job.

I might keep this book on my shelf. I’d like to read it and discuss it with a younger girl sometime to see what she thinks about it!

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Cavanna book was different from her other numerous books. For one thing, it takes place in the mid 1920s. The protagonist, Susan Cucchi, is intelligent, but very unsure of herself. She allows herself to be defined by a crippled leg that she acquired in a bout with polio as a child. She isn't pretty or popular and is always left out of things, which she stoically accepts. Her father is a college educated engineer, but he has no vision and no ambition. He seems to be run by the opinions of his autocratic mother, who also tries to run Susan's life. The one good thing that Susan is good at is art, but grandmother decides that she will be a teacher.

The book delves into what must have been heavy issues in the 1920s- teen pregnancy, heavy drinking (and the consequences), the Ku Klux Klan (when they were against everyone except white protestants), and the trial in Tennessee against Charles Darrow and his theory of evolution. There's actually a lot of information about this, which I found fascinating.

My one complaint is that after running through 4 years of Susan's life, the book ends with too many unanswered questions. Most teenage Cavanna books end with the protagonist finding love. This was not one of them.