Teenage romance by Eve Bennett  

At seventeen, Jean Dickenson was going steady with Bill Stribling, but she was violently jealous. Bill was a disc jockey on a teen-age radio show and his partner was beautiful Renee Gaddis.  It was humiliating for Jean to know that all the kids in high school thought Bill and Renee were in love, and sometimes she suspected it too.  By quarreling with Bill, she was losing the handsomest, most exciting man she had ever known.  One night he said, “If we keep on fighting, all the shine will rub off our love.  Let’s get married secretly.”

Impulsively Jean agreed, and they eloped. But it wasn’t the romantic wedding day of which she had dreamed.  In order to obtain a license they had to forge their parents’ permission, and guilt tarnished their happiness.  Driving home from the wedding, Jean kept thinking how she had deprived her beloved mother of all the fun of a formal ceremony, and how she, too, had been deprived.  But the important thing was, she and Bill were together for keeps.

Yet, they were not together. Because they had no money, they had to live with their parents until they finished high school.  Jean found a secretarial job and they rented an apartment, but Bill spent futile weeks looking for work.  When he finally found it, he called it an “idiot job” and quit to take another just as menial and miserable.  He was moody and defensive and, Jean suspected, irresponsible.  Bills were piling up, and so were her resentments.  Then came the final disaster – she was pregnant.  She didn’t want the baby, she was too young to be tied down!

This is the story of a teen-age marriage in its first beautiful, bewildering year, and of how two people struggled toward maturity together. Readers will find this an unusual novel, warm, wise, rooted in reality.

Julian Messner, Inc (copyright 1959)

This book is no longer in print but can be found at many online booksellers.