Ode to Billy Joe

by Herman Raucher

On June 3, 1953, Billy Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge. Now, years after the whispers and rumors, the muddy Tallahatchie River gives up its secrets, the secrets within the haunting ballad that swept America.

Based on his own screenplay, Herman Raucher has taken the Bobbie Gentry classic and written a tender, funny, and ultimately heartbreaking love story you will never forget.

Genres: Fiction, Young Adult, Classics, Historical Fiction, Romance, Drama

256 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Ebooks now available for download. Print-on-demand to follow soon. See author website for links and updates at www.hermanraucher.com

Herman Raucher began his writing career during The Golden Age of Live Television, penning original one hour dramas for such esteemed shows as Studio One, Goodyear Playhouse and The Alcoa Hour. At about the same time, he was serving as Advertising Copy Director for Walt Disney whose new company, Buena Vista, was venturing from animated films into live action productions. It was also the time of the debut of Disneyland and all the excitement that came with it.

Back in New York he served as Creative Director and Board Member of several major ad agencies. To further fill out his life he turned his pen to writing four plays, six novels and seven films, among them being “Summer of '42” which was both a best-selling novel and a box office success. It earned him an Academy Award Nomination for Best Original Screenplay as well as a similar nomination from The Writers Guild of America. Raucher’s cult film, “Hieronymus Merkin,”won the Best Original Screenplay award from The Writers Guild of Great Britain. His racially charged movie, “Watermelon Man,”shook up the film critics no small end.

He still feels most at home with novels, in that no one can change as much as a comma without his approval—a condition that every writer savors but very few achieve.

Reviews

[Addison]

I'm from Mississippi, near the Tallahatchie Bridge where the book takes place, so it was easy for me to get involved with the characters and the setting. The characters will stick with you forever. The dialogue is awesome...Bobbie Lee's Southern voice is so much fun to read. You will laugh and cry!

[Julie Suzanne]

This is one of my most precious books. In high school, my best friend loaned the book to me, unsure how I would take it because of some of the issues the book presents. (El Cajon, CA) I LOVED it. In the process of reading it, it fell apart and I lost 4 pages in the middle. I then decided I'd replace her book with a new one and keep this copy. I bought a new one, read the 4 missing pages, and then claimed the old one as my own. I highlighted all the words I had to look up---the first time I had ever done that. I read the book a few more times and decided I loved this type of teenage novel--those that really deal with real-life stuff. This marked my conversion from Christopher Pike/Dean Koontz novels to books that made me think. I believe this is the first book I ever discussed with a friend at length.

[Sean Kennedy]

(3.5 / 5)

I remember being ten years old watching this as a midday movie while home sick one day and it was the first film I had ever seen with 'one of those' characters. I was strangely thrilled and I didn't know why. Of course it's pretty horrible that the first movie I saw with a gay character ended up with him killing himself but that was pretty much par for the course growing up in the eighties and early nineties when all gay characters either killed themselves or died of AIDS.

That being said, Billy Joe McAllister has stayed in my head all these years, and even though the book and film can be a little histrionic and overwrought, I still think it is asking for sympathy and empathy for Billy Joe, who never got to live the life he wanted.

[Jazzy Lemon]

A long-time favourite, read many, many times. Written following the hit song, this is a heartfelt story of the events that led to the day that Billy Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.

[Paula Navarro]

La primera vez que leí este libro, lloré. Desde el principio se sabe cómo va a terminar, pero uno no imagina lo desgarrador que puede llegar a ser un amor adolescente.
Narrada de una forma sencilla y directa, Sublime amor juvenil es una historia que te hace reir y llorar, pensar en la suerte que tienes de vivir en una sociedad no tan restringida.
Bobbie Lee es una niña y se comporta como tal. Habla con su muñeco, pero es una mujer también, su cuerpo empieza a tener necesidades y Billy Joe despierta en ella el calor de la pasión adolescente, aunque ella se empeñe en negarlo.
La atracción entre los dos es inevitable, se tratan a veces con desdén, pero ambos son conscientes de que cuando sus cuerpos se acercan, saltan chispas, y la frustración crece, porque el padre de Bobbie Lee aún no le permite salir con chicos.
Es un amor que crece en la furtividad, en los paseos casuales en los que ambos se encuentran, en las escapadas al bosque. Un amor irrefrenablemente ligado al puente Tallahatchie.
Bobbie Lee y Billy Joe no están solos en la historia. Paralelamente, conoceremos a otros habitantes del pueblo.

La segunda vez que lo leí, las páginas pasaron veloces bajo mis dedos y me tenía que obligar a parar, porque de nuevo, la prosa sencilla de Raucher me hacía flotar en una historia de amor, cuyo final ya conocía, pero que volvió a hacerme reír y llorar.

La pena: descatalogado. Y desde hace mucho tiempo. Pero si os he convencido con mi reseña, no desistáis, porque yo lo encontré gracias a internet y muy barato.

[katie halliwell]

..... so HEARTBROKEN again 😭 fave book at 15 and fave book now.

updated film adaptation of this WHEN I’ve been waiting 12 years.

[Alana]

I could read this book a million times!

[fer pacheco]

me dejó picada, un libro de su tiempo. triste, triste por gay. bobbie el mejor personaje. 3.5

[Chantal burke]

This is another book I can remember reading over and over as a young teen and love it just as much at 58 yrs old.

[lui ⭐]

libro de mily la mejor, amo a la protagonista q pena todo joder

[Élefill]

3'5 Billy Joe llevaba desaparecido desde la fiesta, pero amaba profundamente a Bobbie Lee, ¿que le llevo a tirarse desde el puente al rió Tallahatchie?. Una historia que desgraciadamente sabemos desde el principio como terminara y aun así no podemos evitar que nos conmueva, por que ¿que hay mas puro que un amor juvenil?. Billy Joe ha vuelto al pueblo, ahora tiene casi 18 años, Bobbie Lee tiene 15 y esta en esa edad en que ya no es una niña, pero tampoco es una mujer. Al principio se ignoran, luego se pasan papelitos y cuando están cerca saltan chispas, poco a poco los dos sucumben mas allá de la mera atracción, a un amor que crece en la clandestinidad por que a Bobbie Lee no le permiten salir con chicos; la frustración de ambos crece, pero ninguno se va a dar por vencido. Sin embargo pronto llega el suceso que destrozara los sueños y el amor de Bobbie Lee, y a pesar de la pena que la envuelve, demostrara que debajo de esa cara bonita y fragilidad, se esconde una mujer fuerte. Con una pluma directa, el autor nos cuenta una historia sencilla y tragica que emociona al lector.

[Laurie]

I read this as a teenager and was always fascinated with the story and haunted by the song. I read it recently a second time and also enjoyed it but obviously saw it from a completely different perspective than when I was 15.

[Lissi]

Lo leí hace un tiempo por pura curiosidad, en ese momento aún no estaba muy interesada en la lectura, pero el libro me resulto fácil de leer aunque un poco trágico. Para colocarle un rating tendría que releerlo para recordar los detalles.

[Jeni]

It was all right. Not much for a plot except a bit of a coming of age story. Also the description of the book says he dies, so you spend almost the entire time just waiting for it. It was a twist as to why he did it.

[Suki Michelle]

Roundabout way of telling a most disturbing story, told primarily in subtext. An effective portrait of an ostensibly innocent era in the south.

[Hélène Long]

This is probably my favourite book simply for sentimental reasons: I read and fell in love with it when I was a teenager. I can't remember the number of times I've read it since then.

[Luis Alberto Bravo]

¡Es un proto Twin Peaks!

[Lu Na]

Tengo este libro más viejito que no sé qué. Pero es muy bonito y muy triste. Tristísimo.

[Liz Bowman]

(Spoilers at the end.) This book was a quick and enjoyable read. It digs even deeper into the story of Billy Joe McAllister than the movie does and in those moments, Bobby Lee’s inner monologue is like poetry. This story means a lot to me; when I was in 8th grade, our English teacher Mrs. B. was in our unit about ballads and this song came up. I learned it and played it for the class for extra credit and when I told my dad about it, he told me about the movie. Of course, this began my teenage crush on Robby Benson (about 30-some years after the movie came out, but oh well!) The movie stuck with me and holds a special place in my heart so I was very excited to read the novelization and am so glad I did.
SPOILER:
My absolute favorite part was the ending wherein the author sends you with Bobby Lee to New Orleans during the time she spends away from home to “have the baby”. This part was left entirely to imagination in the movie, let alone the song, and was exactly what I was talking about when I called her thoughts poetry. It makes the teenage romance between her and Billie Joe even more real and heartbreaking.

[Rae Wetzel]

The story behind Bobbie Gentry’s hit song from 1967 of the same name.… Interestingly, the book was inspired and published in 1976, AFTER the song was a hit. (Also the movie starring Robby Benson.) If you are familiar with the haunting ballad, I challenge you to read, not sing the famous line: “Billy Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.” Hehe! 🤭 I enjoyed this book set in 1953 Mississippi, and wanted the story behind the news from Choctaw Ridge. It really came together for me in the last 30 pages. There it went from 3 to 4 stars, and the end moved me to a few tears. I like when a story evokes that kind of emotion. I know I liked the movie, Summer of ’42 based on the memoirs of the same author/screenwriter, Herman Raucher, so I may locate a copy of that. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Cecilia Muñoz]

Tengo que decir que cuando veo la portada a color me descoloco un poco: la mía no la conocí así.
A este libro siempre le he tenido mucho cariño, incluso si lo perdí hace tiempo (alguien se lo quedó) y estuve durante 10 años olisqueando en mercados y tiendas de segunda mano hasta que hace unas semanas, en medio de otro tanto de ediciones viejas y no tan viejas, y algunas películas porno, apareció frente a mí. ¡Las sorpresas de la vida!
Tengo ganas de subirlo como audiolibro, ¿será?

[Sharon Falduto]

I was not expecting much from a novelization of a movie based on a song, but I was pleasantly surprised. Well written, interesting, and funny--this is the expansion of that song about old Billy Joe jumpin' off the Tallhatchie Bridge, for reasons that are explained at the climax of the book, so I'm not going to tell you. You also find out what he and Bobbie Lee were throwing off that bridge.

[Bridget]

Another! Novelization! of! a! Movie!
I should create a new tag called the song was better than the movie was better than the book here. All this did was painfully spell out why Billy Joe died which was wholly unnecessary.

[Pedro Conde Luque]

La recuerdo como la primera novela que compré (no la que leí). No tendría yo más de trece o catorce años. Recuerdo que el final me decepcionó tremendamente. Me pareció de lo más simple y estúpido del mundo. Que no quiere decir que no pudiera ocurrir, pero... antes te toca la lotería.

[Jodi Willetts]

I had never heard of this book until a few months ago people. I decided to give it a try and it will definitely be one of those books that stick with you. It gives you a little sense of what it must have been like back in 1960s, being gay, and the feelings and hurt behind all that.

[Ana]

Entiendo que sea famoso entre los estadounidenses, pero a mi no me gusto nada.

[Constance]

It's been awhile, but I remember liking it. I still recall a few scenes.

[Wallis]

Reading it in the late 1980's I still felt the story was very dated. I couldn't really get into it.

[Liv]

so sad, so good, and to think it all started with a song

[Taylor]

Touching, heartbreak story! One of my favorite books!