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A Time for Tenderness
A heart warming story of a girl's adjustment to a new life when she is 'transplanted' to a new school and new country. A year in South America brings maturity to the entire family.
- GenresYoung AdultRomance
234 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1962
65 people want to read
About the author
Betty Cavanna
100 books60 followersAmerican juvenile author (full name: Elizabeth Allen) Betty Cavanna suffered from a crippling disease, infantile paralysis, as a child, which she eventually overcame with treatment and exercise. During her convalescence, attentive adults read to her until she was old enough to read to herself, beginning a long love affair with books.
Cavanna majored in journalism at the New Jersey College for Women in New Brunswick, from where she received the Bachelor of Letters degree in 1929. She also took art classes in New York and Philadelphia. Cavanna's first job was as a reporter for the Bayonne Times. In 1931 she joined the staff of the Westminster Press in Philadelphia and over the next ten years served as advertising manager and art director. She also wrote and sold material to Methodist and Baptist publishing firms. In 1940 she married Edward Talman Headley, with whom she had a son. They moved to Philadelphia. After her husband's death, she married George Russell Harrison, a university dean of science, as well as nonfiction writer, in 1957. He died in 1979.
Cavanna became a full-time writer in 1941. Since then she has written more than seventy books under the name of Betty Cavanna as well as two pseudonyms: Betsy Allen, under which she wrote the "Connie Blair Mystery" series, and Elizabeth Headley, under which she wrote several books, including the Diane stories. As Betty Cavanna she also published the nonfiction "Around the World Today" about young people living in various countries.
Cavanna's juvenile fiction, about the difficulties of adolescenc, appealed to generations of teenage girls. Her characters confronted loneliness, sibling rivalries, divorce, and tense mother-daughter relationships. Her books, although characterized as pleasant, conventional, and stereotyped, have been extremely popular and recommended by critics for their attention to subjects which have reflected girls' interests. Going on Sixteen and Secret Passage were Spring Book Festival honor books in 1946 and 1947.
In the 1970s Cavanna turned to writing mysteries, which she termed "escape fiction," because she said she felt out of sync with the problems of modern teenagers. Two of her books have been runners-up for the Edgar Allan Poe Award: Spice Island Mystery in 1970 and the Ghost of Ballyhooly in 1972.
She died in France (2001).
Cavanna majored in journalism at the New Jersey College for Women in New Brunswick, from where she received the Bachelor of Letters degree in 1929. She also took art classes in New York and Philadelphia. Cavanna's first job was as a reporter for the Bayonne Times. In 1931 she joined the staff of the Westminster Press in Philadelphia and over the next ten years served as advertising manager and art director. She also wrote and sold material to Methodist and Baptist publishing firms. In 1940 she married Edward Talman Headley, with whom she had a son. They moved to Philadelphia. After her husband's death, she married George Russell Harrison, a university dean of science, as well as nonfiction writer, in 1957. He died in 1979.
Cavanna became a full-time writer in 1941. Since then she has written more than seventy books under the name of Betty Cavanna as well as two pseudonyms: Betsy Allen, under which she wrote the "Connie Blair Mystery" series, and Elizabeth Headley, under which she wrote several books, including the Diane stories. As Betty Cavanna she also published the nonfiction "Around the World Today" about young people living in various countries.
Cavanna's juvenile fiction, about the difficulties of adolescenc, appealed to generations of teenage girls. Her characters confronted loneliness, sibling rivalries, divorce, and tense mother-daughter relationships. Her books, although characterized as pleasant, conventional, and stereotyped, have been extremely popular and recommended by critics for their attention to subjects which have reflected girls' interests. Going on Sixteen and Secret Passage were Spring Book Festival honor books in 1946 and 1947.
In the 1970s Cavanna turned to writing mysteries, which she termed "escape fiction," because she said she felt out of sync with the problems of modern teenagers. Two of her books have been runners-up for the Edgar Allan Poe Award: Spice Island Mystery in 1970 and the Ghost of Ballyhooly in 1972.
She died in France (2001).
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 20, 2009
This is one of the first books that really got me into reading. I read it in middle school and I love how the author describes Rio and how it was as a teenager going to a south american school and relationships and friendships the girl had there. One of my favorites!
January 30, 2026
Unusual YA novel from 1962 about a teen girl, Peggy, who moves from North Carolina to Rio de Janeiro when her father gets a job there. Betty Cavanna's novels always have a great sense of place, and this one was no exception, the evocation of the city is great
I was surprised that a major theme of the book was the family's reaction to the different attitudes towards race that they encounter in Brazil. This is handled honestly and realistically for the time the book was set. Peggy knows her mother's overt racism (not actually labeled as such) is wrong, but finds it hard to overcome her own upbringing in a segregated society, though she tries. A book published today as historical fiction from that era would probably not have this nuance and have a character like Peggy make an abrupt and unconvincing transformation into something more like a present day anti-racist. That said, this realism may not make A Time for Tenderness a comfortable read for many.
Oh yes, there's a romance too -- the least interesting part of the book.
I was surprised that a major theme of the book was the family's reaction to the different attitudes towards race that they encounter in Brazil. This is handled honestly and realistically for the time the book was set. Peggy knows her mother's overt racism (not actually labeled as such) is wrong, but finds it hard to overcome her own upbringing in a segregated society, though she tries. A book published today as historical fiction from that era would probably not have this nuance and have a character like Peggy make an abrupt and unconvincing transformation into something more like a present day anti-racist. That said, this realism may not make A Time for Tenderness a comfortable read for many.
Oh yes, there's a romance too -- the least interesting part of the book.
March 28, 2020
Margaret Cullen Jamison, Peggy, and her family are moving to South America for her Dad's work. Unlike most stories with a similar situation, Peggy is not completely set against the change and quickly learns to adjust to living in the foreign environment. She makes friends with a Brazilian girl named Guida and her brother Carlos, who seems to be more then a friend. The book deals with topics of racism and traditions. I was pleasantly surprised with the way Betty Cavanna treats the subjects, considering the time the book is written. I think what made me give the book 5 stars, instead of 3 or 4, was the untraditional ending for this kind of genre.
April 23, 2008
I was in 7th grade when I read this book and just getting interested in boys and romance novels. This was the first of many Betty Cavanna books I read back then and probably my favorite.
January 26, 2009
about a yong lady named peggy who moves to Rio de Janerio.
October 13, 2024
I honestly wasn't expecting more than a 3-star read from this, despite its uncommon setting (especially for 1962), but wow! Although there's a romantic subplot for sure, there's at least as much novel detail about the city and culture in Rio de Janeiro, mainly in the upper class -- which is at one point contrasted by her volunteer work for a medical clinic in the slums -- and SUCH an interesting running theme about race and racism, and the different ways it is perceived in South America versus the U.S., specifically in the American South.
I don't even know if someone trying to write historical fiction about this time period today would illuminate this element so well in terms of contrasting the mother's perspective (obviously wrong, the sort of woman who's kind and "always courteous" to black people...so long as they know their place*), with that of her teenage daughter's, a girl who feels that her mother's perspective is wrong, but has grown up so thoroughly steeped in social separation between black and white that she struggles not only to outright defy her mother, but even to properly articulate why.
At one point she tries to defend her little brother's right to play with a dark-skinned boy, calling her mother frightfully old-fashioned, yet simultaneously justifying "he doesn't bring them to the house." At another, she's shocked to learn her love interest's grandmother is black (and a former slave; today I learned Brazil was the last country in the western Hemisphere to abolish slavery, in 1888), and while she thinks it shouldn't matter, she still has a vague sense of uneasiness and, knowing how it will horrify her mother, also endeavors to keep this a secret.
* A particularly interesting paragraph about the way Peggy's mother has passed down the values she herself had been taught as a well-bred Southern lady: "Never use the term [N-word]. Always shake hands with old Negro friends. It isn't 'correct' to call a colored man 'mister,' invite him into the living room, or sit with him on a bench in the park. And always, always be on the lookout for a Negro who doesn't conform; he could be dangerous."
These are the kinds of tenements that I imagine were once relatively commonplace, but not something I tended to see in historical fiction I read growing up, where white people tended to be either crusaders for justice or pretty close to Klansmen, versus justifying casual racism as simple social custom -- the fact that it's spoken by a character who is certainly not otherwise presented as a villain makes it more shocking. There's a nod to her father, having been raised in the much more diverse New York City, seeming to quietly disagree with his wife's views, but it's clear he avoids the topic to minimize friction between them, so Peggy has to come to most of her beliefs in equality on her own.
I appreciate, too, that despite the existence of a love-interest, this isn't a starry teen romance by any measure. Much as she moons about him, social custom here -- in which families have a heavy say in marriage, so teenagers don't date or spend time one-on-one, they must be chaperoned or with a large group of peers -- creates a number of challenging obstacles.
I don't even know if someone trying to write historical fiction about this time period today would illuminate this element so well in terms of contrasting the mother's perspective (obviously wrong, the sort of woman who's kind and "always courteous" to black people...so long as they know their place*), with that of her teenage daughter's, a girl who feels that her mother's perspective is wrong, but has grown up so thoroughly steeped in social separation between black and white that she struggles not only to outright defy her mother, but even to properly articulate why.
At one point she tries to defend her little brother's right to play with a dark-skinned boy, calling her mother frightfully old-fashioned, yet simultaneously justifying "he doesn't bring them to the house." At another, she's shocked to learn her love interest's grandmother is black (and a former slave; today I learned Brazil was the last country in the western Hemisphere to abolish slavery, in 1888), and while she thinks it shouldn't matter, she still has a vague sense of uneasiness and, knowing how it will horrify her mother, also endeavors to keep this a secret.
* A particularly interesting paragraph about the way Peggy's mother has passed down the values she herself had been taught as a well-bred Southern lady: "Never use the term [N-word]. Always shake hands with old Negro friends. It isn't 'correct' to call a colored man 'mister,' invite him into the living room, or sit with him on a bench in the park. And always, always be on the lookout for a Negro who doesn't conform; he could be dangerous."
These are the kinds of tenements that I imagine were once relatively commonplace, but not something I tended to see in historical fiction I read growing up, where white people tended to be either crusaders for justice or pretty close to Klansmen, versus justifying casual racism as simple social custom -- the fact that it's spoken by a character who is certainly not otherwise presented as a villain makes it more shocking. There's a nod to her father, having been raised in the much more diverse New York City, seeming to quietly disagree with his wife's views, but it's clear he avoids the topic to minimize friction between them, so Peggy has to come to most of her beliefs in equality on her own.
I appreciate, too, that despite the existence of a love-interest, this isn't a starry teen romance by any measure. Much as she moons about him, social custom here -- in which families have a heavy say in marriage, so teenagers don't date or spend time one-on-one, they must be chaperoned or with a large group of peers -- creates a number of challenging obstacles.
June 5, 2025
I really enjoyed this Cavanna book. It was a pleasant travelogue of Rio, while paired with the story of an American family who moved there, and especially of their teenage daughter, Peggy Jamison. With her copper-colored hair, sixteen year-old Peggy is a novelty at the high school she attends in Rio. She soon catches the eye of a senior named Carlos. Brazilian families are not as easy to get to know as they are in the US. They have traditions and protocols and outsiders are rarely allowed in. Peggy is happy when Carlos' family accepts her a a friend for Carlos and his sister, Guida.
The one thing that bothered me was what was probably a big issue at the time: racism. Mrs. Jamison was raised in Alabama, and there were strict rules and protocols about talking to black people. When Peggy's little brother, Tobey, brings home his best friend, a black boy named Ernie, Mrs. Jamison freaks out and forbids Tobey to see his friend. The young boy doesn't understand. Mr. Jamison says that there are no color lines in Rio, but Mrs. Jamison is a product of her upbringing. I felt sorry for all of the children. But this was written in 1962.
The one thing that bothered me was what was probably a big issue at the time: racism. Mrs. Jamison was raised in Alabama, and there were strict rules and protocols about talking to black people. When Peggy's little brother, Tobey, brings home his best friend, a black boy named Ernie, Mrs. Jamison freaks out and forbids Tobey to see his friend. The young boy doesn't understand. Mr. Jamison says that there are no color lines in Rio, but Mrs. Jamison is a product of her upbringing. I felt sorry for all of the children. But this was written in 1962.
September 15, 2022
This book would never, ever pass muster these days. The author tried to show the awfulness of the racial prejudice of her day, but even the more enlightened teen daughter had her judgmental moments (I guess she had a lot to overcome with her mother's not-very-nice influence on her upbringing). The sights and sounds of Rio were well described, but this was definitely not my favorite BC book.
November 21, 2022
I love this book! Sure, it’s very dated. The way the author approaches subjects of culture and race half a century ago are very different than how they’d be addressed now. That being said, I love the story of the family from Charlotte, NC, who moves to Rio de Janeiro for dad’s job.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews