For my generalized gushing and introduction to the Betsy-Tacy series, go to this post.
Heaven to Betsy introduces us to Betsy just before she begins her freshman year of high school, and takes us through the ups and downs of that first year. This is one of my two favorites of the entire series (the other being Betsy and the Great World). If I start listing everything I love about this book you’re going to get something like “Miss Mix creates stylish new outfits and Mr Ray makes onion sandwiches and there are picnics and the Crowd and Halloween and Carney and Tony and JOE!” and then I will collapse in a pile of swoony fangirlishness. So instead I’m going to focus my discussion on two things that make this book stand out.
First is a general quality of the entire series, which I find particularly noticeable starting with the high school books. When I read these books, I feel a basic underlying optimism about life, that loved ones will support you, that there is always beauty and hope in the world. Some people might say that these are “nice” books. But I am not sure that word captures what I’m talking about. Perhaps this is because of early exposure to the musical Into the Woods, which leaves me silently singing the witch’s song anytime I hear the word “nice”: You’re not good, you’re not bad, you’re just nice.
The Betsy books are “nice”, but that doesn’t mean they don’t contain the good and the bad as well. Betsy has a loving family, but it’s all (to me, at least) entirely real and believable. These aren’t cardboard Mom and Dad cut-outs with smiles painted on. They are real people complete with faults and virtues. Betsy gets her heart broken, she makes mistakes, she hurts other people. And yet I never feel a lasting bitterness. Pain and regret, yes, but there’s a peace to it. A feeling that Betsy (or perhaps Maud, since these are semi-autobiographical) can look back and come to terms with her life. It’s a different feeling than what I get reading the Little House Books, where I do perceive a bitterness, a self-censoring by the author that makes the books more distant. It’s also a different feeling than what I get reading the Anne books, which have an almost fairy-tale like quality to me — they describe a golden-hued beautiful world I love visiting, but it’s not quite as down-to-earth as Betsy’s world. There’s a place for all these types of books, of course. But if you are looking for a book that is old-timey and sweet and nice, but also very grounded and real, you might find it here.
The second thing about Heaven to Betsy in particular that I think makes it worth reading, especially for anyone who is a writer or dreams of being one, is the depiction of Betsy as a budding writer. On the brink of high-school, and having just moved in to a new house, Betsy begins the book feeling that there isn’t a place for writing in her new life. In earlier books, Betsy uses a beloved old trunk as her desk to write poems, but it somehow doesn’t belong in the new room, and Betsy herself suggests it be moved to the attic. And yet:
Sometimes she climbed into the attic and stuffed smudged, scribbled papers furtively into the trunk, standing forlorn in a dark corner. On such occasions she often cried a little, never much, for it always occurred to her how romantic it was to be crying about her trunk, and then she stopped, and couldn’t start again.
Betsy quickly gets whisked away by all sorts of other diversions: meeting new high school chums, making fudge, picnics, singalongs, parties, and falling hard for the new boy Tony. It is exhilarating and breathless and FUN but yet there’s something more. By winter time we find:
The snow which all day long had sparkled in the sunshine looked pale. Walking homeward, looking up at the sky, and around her at the wan landscape, she felt an inexplicable yearning. It was mixed up with Tony, but it was more than Tony. It was growing up; it was leaving Hill Street and having someone else light a lamp in the beloved yellow cottage. She felt like crying, and yet there was nothing to cry about.
That passage in particular still really hits me — capturing a feeling I have experienced many times myself, especially as a teen. And like me, Betsy seeks refuge in her writing. Yet she still hides it away. The other girls don’t write, and the boys tease her about being a Little Poetess. She recognizes that she wants to be a writer some day, and even that her older sister Julia (who wants to be an opera singer and “never cared what people thought”) would never have put that trunk in the attic and “buried her poems in a handkerchief box”.
But while Betsy recognizes this, she doesn’t change her ways. When she’s chosen to participate in the annual school essay contest (competing against handsome but perplexing Joe Willard) she is thrilled, yet still doesn’t manage to handle it the way she might wish. But she does learn from the experience:
She looked back over the crowded winter. She did not regret it. But she should not have let its fun, its troubles, its excitements squeeze her writing out.
“If I treat my writing like that,” she told herself, “it may go away entirely.”
The thought appalled her. What would life be like without her writing? Writing filled her life with beauty and mystery, gave it purpose… and promise.
When Betsy finally acts on that realization I am cheering for her! And even now, it never fails to remind me, as a writer, that I have to make room for writing in my life.
There’s so much more I could talk about: the thoughtful portrayal of religion, the way Lovelace captures the exquisite ache of a first (unrequited) crush, all the wonderful period details, Betsy’s steadfast friendship with Tacy. But I’ll leave you all to find out about that if you read this book for yourself. I don’t expect everyone will love it as much as I, but if you do give it a try and do enjoy it, please let me know. And if you are already a fan, feel free to share your thoughts on the book! I’d love to hear them!
