Direct from Atlanta:
For YA’all of all ages!

By Julie Bookman
July 11, 2020

As the self-appointed “Dear Abby” of the Copper Clapper Caper experience, I’m adding a little to the reviews I previously submitted concerning adult fiction: In my Top 10 of the last decade or two are these: “Gilead,” by Marilynne Robinson; “My Name is Lucy Barton,” by my fave living author, Elizabeth Strout; and “Beautiful Ruins,” by Jess Walter, Spokane journalist-turned-author who also did the Ruby Ridge nonfiction.

Now to a semi-new, semi-autobiographical topic that, after a few paragraphs, will veer sharply into full-tilt-autobiographical: For 25 years I’ve somehow managed to hold on to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution kids’ (ages 14 to 18) book beat, and I am indeed a regular broken record shouting that grownups are missing a lot of great lit when they banish thoughts of ever reading “YA,” or “young adult” titles. (Loose definition today: any book that has a teen as narrator or protagonist. So, in today’s publishing realm, “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “Catcher in the Rye” would most likely be categorized as “YA.”)

I was going to rattle off a list of YA authors to read. Instead, if you are interested, please email me! (But if you want a good sob — and who doesn’t right now? — please do consider “Orbiting Jupiter,” closer to a novella, by Gary D. Schmidt. If you want an enchanting story to read to your grandkids (one or two chapters at a time), I greatly adore “Orphan Island,” by Laurel Snyder of Atlanta. (Screenplays are needed for both these “O” books!) I also really “dug” Jason Reynolds’ “Track” series. Each book centers on one misfit kid on an elite city track team, so the four books are titled “Ghost”; “Patina”; “Sonny”; and “Lu.”

What’s that? You are hungry for more sports these days? I also adore the “Crossover” series by Kwame Alexander. Titles include “Crossover” (Newbery Medal winner); “Rebound”; and “Booked.”

But, speaking of YA: In 1973, I devoured “The Cheerleader,” by Ruth Doan MacDougall. It was published as an adult novel, even though it centered on a girl named Snowy (aka Henrietta Snow), ages 16-18, in mid-1950s New Hampshire.

It is where I learned a lot about sex.

The book’s cover, of a blonde pony-tailed high school cheerleader, sure made it seem appropriate for teens, but, surprise, it was not meant for teens — not back then. (Today it would be considered A-OK.) Nevertheless, it was high school girls who helped to make it a bestseller. (It was also a Book-of-the-Month Club selection.)

When the paperback came out in 1974 or early ’75, there was a brunette “sex kitten” on the cover who resembled no character in the book.

In short, “The Cheerleader” defied categorization and genre placement when it was published, which helps explain why it fell through the cracks, to an extent, or was forgotten by Hollywood types looking for properties to snap up. (YA is very hot source material in the film world these days.)

OK. So after more than 40 years of shouting that there should be a movie, and after 30 years of talking about writing it ourselves (with husbands rolling their eyes), my sister Susan and I spent three years off and on (2015-2018) finally writing a “Cheerleader” screenplay. We think we have done about a dozen drafts.

Once galvanized by the reaction to a couple of table readings, in late 2018 I tracked down author MacDougall, who is now 81. (Ruth even remembered that I had also called her back in 1992 (!!!), telling her that we wanted to write the screenplay! But right after that, my sister decided to have four kids, so there was a — delay).

So. The week of Thanksgiving 2018, Susan and I met in Boston and drove to the middle of snow-covered New Hampshire. We were the only guests at a “Shining”-type lodge and never saw another soul there (not even anyone working there; a note plus our keys were found on the counter when we entered the cold, enormous lobby with an enormously unlit fireplace). We drove another hour the next morn to take our script to our dear author. We sisters split up all of the characters between the two of us and read it to Ruth at her dining room table. (Susan is always Snowy and I always read the role of Tom plus Snowy’s two best friends, Bev and Jean “Puddles” Pond.)

While Ruth followed along with a script in front of her, we paused only when she got a little choked up. (Like the part when Tom calls “Moonglow” the “sexiest song ever.” Ruth let out a small peep, noting that her fella Don had said the same thing. We of course reminded her that we didn’t make it up — we got it straight from the book.)

The original author claimed to love our “faithful” adaptation, even though she would go on to send us 40 pages of typed notes — 20 pages at first, then I delivered a revised script to her last summer and we received yet another 20 pages! Notes such as debating whether boys in her high school in 1956 would say “man oh man” and pondering where the butter dish was stored in the kitchen. Also, Ruth kept correcting our lay-laying-lying-it-takes-an-object mishaps.

(FYI: the love story of Snowy and Tom in “The Cheerleader” is based on the real romance of “Doanie” and Don: In high school they were brainy cheerleader Ruth “Doanie” Doan and star athlete Don Dougall. But don’t expect the real story to have the same ending as in the novel or in the someday-movie! (Oh, and lest anyone is wondering: Don actually added “Mac” to the front of his surname so that his wife, the author, could be Ruth Doan MacDougall, rather than “Ruth Doan Dougall.” Now that’s my kinda guy. Sadly, Don died just two months before we contacted Ruth to say we had a script and wanted to pay her a visit.)

At that first reading in her home, Ruth happily agreed to grant us (aka “The Screaming Sisters”) the rights to her story. Ruth had had a brief-and-disastrous episode with “The Cheerleader” in Hollywood in the late ’70s, but never mind. A pilot was shot that reportedly was kaka, but never mind. We’re just lucky that the rights reverted to her.

Securing those rights so that we can finally “shop” our script took more than a year. But now we have the exclusive option. We have until late 2021 to sell this sucker.

Who knows if it should be a Netflix or Hulu series or a feature film, but we wrote the latter. In short, we have always sort of “seen it” as something of a cross between “Splendor in the Grass” (intense romance/passion and endless frustration because teenagers in love are afraid to “do it”); “American Graffiti” (for the nostalgic aspect, the cool cars, and the hot tunes of the era — in our case, specific tunes are noted throughout both book and script and I’d love to get current artists to re-do many); and “Hoosiers” (for the authenticity factor: “real” and humble people and place, a no-frills high school, careworn clothes instead of bright, just-made “costumes,” etc.)

If I have interested anyone in channeling his or her 16-year-old self to read “The Cheerleader,” (reprint from Frigate books is avail via Amazon — along with a kindle version), here is the dangling carrot: I will send our script (pdf) to anyone who has read the novel.

I always welcome notes and input. Also, Hollywood connections. (Like, if your neighbor’s cousin sleeps with an agent at CAA, for example.)

I’ve only just returned from my dad’s house (Berkeley, Ca). While I was there, an 82-year-old close family friend (named Howard) asked about our script and we let him borrow Dad’s copy. Howard read the script, and he also watched “Splendor in the Grass” for the first time. By the time I was back in Atlanta, he was on the phone with “four important ideas/notes” for us. Each “note” was terrific and even essential — and two of them are major things to consider, in an overarching thematic sense.

Late, and sad, news from Julie: My dear dad, film scholar and author Larry Swindell, died of congestive heart failure after I initially compiled all of these thoughts and eight days after I returned from visiting him. He was 91. I also feel that this Clapper Group filled with "my, isn't that interesting" folks, might like to know of this "something wild" that I only just came across.

We always knew that Dad had the same birthday, June 10, as Judy Garland — who was his favorite singer next to Jo Stafford. Just yesterday I looked up Judy to recall how much older she was. Dad was born in 1929, while Judy (aka Frances Gumm), was born in 1922. But HERE is the uncanny thing: Dad and Judy also died on the very same day: June 22. (Judy in 1969.)

Back to Julie’s continuing narrative, picking back up with Howard …

Howard, a former DA and later a judge, had never before read a “women’s or girls’ novel,” as he put it.

I left out the part that from 1972-74, I wrote a once-a-month “Fiction for Teens” column in the Philadelphia Inquirer (yes it helped that my dad was the book editor). One month, “The Cheerleader” was my “lead” review (this was before we learned that this book was not meant for teens, hahaha).

Still: Imagine my thrill when a snippet from my book review appeared on the back of that paperback edition (the one with the brunette sex kitten on the cover). That excerpt/blurb: “It’s heartbreaking at times, hilarious at others, and she’s got it all down beautifully.”

[Dear Missuz Staz, Shari Fountain, who recently read the novel: Do you want me to send screenplay? Did I already get one to you?]

Wagons, Ho! (and a mean man named Print)

(Julie is back with an updater …)

What am I reading now: I am three-quarters of the way through writing another screenplay (this time solo). It’s set in 1850s and is a wagon train adventure — and best not to jinx things by saying more.

But it’s why my PRL (Pandemic Reading List) now includes titles like “By Ox Team to California”; “California: A Trip Across the Plains, Spring of 1850”; and “Everyday Artifacts America: 1750-1850.” And from the Time Life Books: “The Pioneers” and “Covered Wagon Women: Diaries & Letters from the Western Trails: 1854-1860.”

A great many of these are available for Kindle for $2. Some old-timey diaries are even free.

I am also currently researching the “infamous” brother of my great-great-great grandmother (on my dad’s maternal side). (My g-g-g gran was Elizabeth Olive Wynn, and she was three years older than her brother Print Olive (1840-1866), aka “one tough hombre” aka “man burner.” Real name Isom Prentice Olive, but he was never called anything but Print.

He was a little guy, but a much-feared Texas cattle rancher (later Nebraska) who lived mean and died mean. If you are so inclined, go ahead and Google “Print Olive” and “man burner.” He killed men and got away with it. A famous quote of his: “It’s easier to turn men than cattle,” because he could bribe a judge or talk a judge out of convicting him.

I’m sort of aiming to work a mean outfit such as “Print Olive and the Olive gang” (he had a lot of brothers, even one named Jay) into my wagon train story. A couple of books have been written about Print Olive, but I’m really digging “The Cattlemen: From the Rio Grande Across the Fair Marias,” by Mari Sandoz (1958), which has a good chapter on Print Olive and the Olive family (but is filled with a wealth of cool tales of cattlemen of yesteryear). I also recently got my hands on “The Ladder Of Rivers: The Story of I.P. (Print) Olive,” by Harry E. Chrisman (1962), and am trying to wade through that as well.

So there’s a whole lotta reading going on, and I am hoping (no, I’m actually counting on it), that Reading Will Be the Thing That Saves This World.