THE EDUCATION OF NANCY ADAMS
A Novel
Nancy Adams is a childless widow who has spent the previous four years slowly spending her dead husband's estate and drinking too much. Afraid of becoming the town's official spinster and overall spook, she finally accepts her first real full-time job ever, as a history teacher at the Florida high school from which she graduated almost twenty years earlier. The principal who offers her the job, Russell Parsons, was her history teacher when she was a student. They had an intense, but platonic, relationship then, but he was too old for her and about to get married. He is now 47, she is 37, so age is not a factor anymore, and he is married to a woman that everyone in town hates and they assume he must be unhappy. Nancy thus sees an opportunity to start her life over with her first love. She is wrong.
Looming in the back of Nancy's mind is the intellectual ghost of Henry Adams, the Harvard historian whose Education was required reading for her in college. Her own education sends her back to him, requiring her to first acknowledge her debt to him before she eventually becomes his teacher.
Other key characters include: Dell Rose, the basketball coach who most people believe is sleeping with any and all living females of any age or color. Dell is charismatic, charming, absolutely politically incorrect, but eventually becomes heroic at the end. Agnes Rose is Dell's mother and also a teacher at the same school, a wonderful teacher who has a hard time reconciling her strong religious beliefs with her favorite son's behavior. Donna Parton is the school counselor, a witty woman who knows everything about everybody. Fred Stein is an over-achieving senior who becomes Nancy's favorite student. April Bourne is headed for valedictorian, super intelligent but also malicious and unprincipled. Finally, Dana O'Connor, the eighteen year old unwed mother who is brilliant and mysterious. Dana was headed for the valedictorian honor until she had to drop out of school to have her baby. Back now, child in tow, Dana is being allowed to make up all the courses she missed in addition to her regular class-load. Russell Parsons is letting her do this, fueling rumors about him and her, rumors that April exploits. Nancy slowly uncovers the "truth" about Dana and Russell, but it is not what people think.
A Novel
Nancy Adams is a childless widow who has spent the previous four years slowly spending her dead husband's estate and drinking too much. Afraid of becoming the town's official spinster and overall spook, she finally accepts her first real full-time job ever, as a history teacher at the Florida high school from which she graduated almost twenty years earlier. The principal who offers her the job, Russell Parsons, was her history teacher when she was a student. They had an intense, but platonic, relationship then, but he was too old for her and about to get married. He is now 47, she is 37, so age is not a factor anymore, and he is married to a woman that everyone in town hates and they assume he must be unhappy. Nancy thus sees an opportunity to start her life over with her first love. She is wrong.
Looming in the back of Nancy's mind is the intellectual ghost of Henry Adams, the Harvard historian whose Education was required reading for her in college. Her own education sends her back to him, requiring her to first acknowledge her debt to him before she eventually becomes his teacher.
Other key characters include: Dell Rose, the basketball coach who most people believe is sleeping with any and all living females of any age or color. Dell is charismatic, charming, absolutely politically incorrect, but eventually becomes heroic at the end. Agnes Rose is Dell's mother and also a teacher at the same school, a wonderful teacher who has a hard time reconciling her strong religious beliefs with her favorite son's behavior. Donna Parton is the school counselor, a witty woman who knows everything about everybody. Fred Stein is an over-achieving senior who becomes Nancy's favorite student. April Bourne is headed for valedictorian, super intelligent but also malicious and unprincipled. Finally, Dana O'Connor, the eighteen year old unwed mother who is brilliant and mysterious. Dana was headed for the valedictorian honor until she had to drop out of school to have her baby. Back now, child in tow, Dana is being allowed to make up all the courses she missed in addition to her regular class-load. Russell Parsons is letting her do this, fueling rumors about him and her, rumors that April exploits. Nancy slowly uncovers the "truth" about Dana and Russell, but it is not what people think.
Used availability for Larry Baker's The Education of Nancy Adams