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The Snowy Series #2
Snowy
What happened next?
Ruth Doan MacDougall received countless letters from readers of THE CHEERLEADER, asking this question. She answered it by writing SNOWY, which chronicles Snowy’s next thirty years.
SNOWY, set in the years 1957 - 1987, picks up the story where it ended in the first title of The Snowy Series, THE CHEERLEADER. Snowy and her friends, who are coming of age in the security of the 1950s when roles were accepted and defined, follow unique paths during the next three decades. This was a time of rapid changes in American society and readers can experience how those changes affected real-life fictional characters as each copes with the challenges of college, marriage, career, and changes within immediate and extended families.
“Readers should prepare to laugh out loud and cry in earnest as former high school cheerleader Henrietta Snow grows up in this delightful sequel to THE CHEERLEADER.”
—Library Journal
Ruth Doan MacDougall received countless letters from readers of THE CHEERLEADER, asking this question. She answered it by writing SNOWY, which chronicles Snowy’s next thirty years.
SNOWY, set in the years 1957 - 1987, picks up the story where it ended in the first title of The Snowy Series, THE CHEERLEADER. Snowy and her friends, who are coming of age in the security of the 1950s when roles were accepted and defined, follow unique paths during the next three decades. This was a time of rapid changes in American society and readers can experience how those changes affected real-life fictional characters as each copes with the challenges of college, marriage, career, and changes within immediate and extended families.
“Readers should prepare to laugh out loud and cry in earnest as former high school cheerleader Henrietta Snow grows up in this delightful sequel to THE CHEERLEADER.”
—Library Journal
432 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 1, 1993
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67 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
November 7, 2011
While I loved the 1st book The Cheerleader, the story following Snowy through college to her late 40s lacked enthusiasm for me. Some of the story skipped years, which is fine, but seemed more sketchy and incomplete than Snowy and friends during their high school years which included a lot of fashion, cultural references and fads of the time. Maybe it was just the glory days were behind them and adult life is more mundane.
Snowy actually came across as boring and complacent in the later half of the book. Her young energy and gusto became lethargic. While she and Alan seemed to have a passionate although comfortable marriage, after his death she was quick to find Tom and ignore her daughter. She also seemed purposely distant from her friends Bev and Puddles. Usually your girlfriends are go to when times are tough. The gang endures the problems of career, marriage, boyfriends, and aging parents. Interestingly Snowy who appeared to want to break out of the small town girl mold eventually became just the girl she wanted to escape. Her Bennington and Boston goals changed when she met Alan and so did her mental health and self esteem. Kind of depressing when you had high hopes for her as an adult maturing during an era where woman were starting to acknowledge changing roles.
Overall, I am glad I read the book and got some closure on what happened to the class of 1957.
Snowy actually came across as boring and complacent in the later half of the book. Her young energy and gusto became lethargic. While she and Alan seemed to have a passionate although comfortable marriage, after his death she was quick to find Tom and ignore her daughter. She also seemed purposely distant from her friends Bev and Puddles. Usually your girlfriends are go to when times are tough. The gang endures the problems of career, marriage, boyfriends, and aging parents. Interestingly Snowy who appeared to want to break out of the small town girl mold eventually became just the girl she wanted to escape. Her Bennington and Boston goals changed when she met Alan and so did her mental health and self esteem. Kind of depressing when you had high hopes for her as an adult maturing during an era where woman were starting to acknowledge changing roles.
Overall, I am glad I read the book and got some closure on what happened to the class of 1957.
August 9, 2021
Will she or won't she hook back up with Tom? Don't read any further if you don't want to know. I have to say, considering "The Cheerleader" is one of the best books ever written in this genre, the first two-thirds of "Snowy" is profoundly disappointing. The author wastes too many words repeating events that happened in the first book for the apparent benefit of new readers. It has to be for new readers, because I can assure you that no one who ever read "The Cheerleader" forgot who Dudley was, or why Snowy and Tom broke up. The first part especially is irritatingly written, and far too vulgar considering the spare but effective use of words like "fuck" in the original. Snowy's college days just do not have the ring of truth to them. And why does Snowy's roommate have to be named Harriet? Harriet and Henrietta together made for awkward reading. But the Grand Prize for awkwardness goes to the name of Snowy's daughter, I word I stumbled over every single time I read it. Ruhamah? Rumahah? I don't feel like getting up and getting the book right now. And yes, Bev and Puddles are as boring as ever. It does get better toward the last third. Certain things are foreshadowed (Tom, Tom, Tom) but he does emerge in a way that takes you by surprise. You'll enjoy reading this in the last few chapters, but you won't re-read it.
April 23, 2019
Doan MacDougall's "The Cheerleader" was the "naughty book" of my adolescence. As a naive teen, "The Cheerleader" was an eye popping peek into the lives of 50's teens. My assumption that my contemporaries were unique in engaging in bad behavior was blown away by the antics of Snowy, Tom, Bev, Puddles, Dudley and their cohorts.
Like many readers, "The Cheerleader" piqued my curiosity about the characters' future exploits. "Snowy" is the uneven sequel that follows Snowy from college at Bennington Vt., through marriage, motherhood and middle age. I say uneven as I had trouble engaging with the story, mainly due to the constant flashbacks to the original "Cheerleader". Maybe new readers need this background but it was annoyed me.
I also liked and related less to Snowy as the story progressed. She just seemed kind of self absorbed and boring. Plus, of course, she and Tom somehow managed to get (mostly) back together at the end. I don't know what I expected but this was underwhelming. That doesn't mean I won't read the final in this trilogy just out of curiosity.
Like many readers, "The Cheerleader" piqued my curiosity about the characters' future exploits. "Snowy" is the uneven sequel that follows Snowy from college at Bennington Vt., through marriage, motherhood and middle age. I say uneven as I had trouble engaging with the story, mainly due to the constant flashbacks to the original "Cheerleader". Maybe new readers need this background but it was annoyed me.
I also liked and related less to Snowy as the story progressed. She just seemed kind of self absorbed and boring. Plus, of course, she and Tom somehow managed to get (mostly) back together at the end. I don't know what I expected but this was underwhelming. That doesn't mean I won't read the final in this trilogy just out of curiosity.
December 5, 2018
An excellent sequel to "The Cheerleader", this book follows the lives of the 3 main characters, focusing on Snowy, as they moves through their lives, ending just before they reach 50. Though these women are 10 years older than I and came of age in the 50s, and I came of age in the 60s, our experiences growing up in a smallish town are very similar. Engrossing read!
July 14, 2025
After I finished The Cheerleader by this author (a reread after many years), I went straight to Snowy which begins with her first year at Bennington College and ends in her fiftieth year. Snowy has more than her share of sadness and tragedy, magnified by her introspective nature. I couldn’t put the book down and will quickly be getting my hands on a copy of the next one, Henrietta Snow.
July 13, 2024
its reading books with a girl around my age as the main character that makes me realize just how sheltered my life really was.
And makes me all the more grateful in some cases
And makes me all the more grateful in some cases
May 4, 2019
In 1973, MacDougall published The Cheerleader, a now-classic story of the struggle to get through four years in a small-town high school in the late 1950s and out into Real Life. The focus was the overachieving Henrietta “Snowy” Snow and her closest friends of both sexes and we learned a great deal about all of them by the time they graduated. Written twenty years later (partly, I’m sure, in response to the clamor of fans who demanded to know what came next), this is the immediate sequel, taking Snowy and the gang through the rest of their lives.
In the first of three episodes, Snowy goes off to Bennington while the beautiful Bev, her closest friend since Second Grade, enters a secretarial school in Boston. (There weren’t a lot of career choices for even bright girls back then.) Puddles, the fearless member of the trio, starts nursing school, also in the city. Tom Forbes, with whom Snowy is deeply in love but from whom she forces herself to separate in an effort to keep moving forward and to not be merely an adjunct to someone else, becomes a shop major at a local teacher’s college but shortly switches to English, to everyone’s surprise. But, as they expect -- especially the girls -- most of the group are soon married and having kids. Snowy herself wants to be a poet, though she knows she won’t be able to support herself at that and will have to have some sort of job as well, so she begins working summers and non-resident terms for a publisher in Boston. But then, while researching a local poet for her senior thesis, she meets Alan Sutherland, an architectural historian working for a preservation project, and as soon as she graduates, she’s married, too. They will have to live cheaply for awhile, of course, but life is looking good for all of them.
Then the narrative jumps to the early ‘70s. Snowy has had several poetry collections published, Alan has moved up in his profession sufficiently to take some of the pressure off their budget, Bev has married her high school sweetheart (one of them, anyway) who is now a successful Connecticut lawyer, and Puddles is living in South Carolina, the wife of a semi-wealthy real estate developer who had been one of her patients at the hospital in Boston. But while they keep up with each other by mail, and on special occasions by long-distance phone calls, circumstances and geography are such that the three haven’t actually met face-to-face in a decade. And Snowy and Alan decide it’s time to finally have a child of their own.
The third section of the book moves another fifteen years into the future. The gang are nearing their 50th birthdays, Alan has thrown over the history business to attempt to make a living from a general store (he’s a classic burnout), Snowy is afflicted with agoraphobia (the reason for which is hinted at but never really developed), and their daughter is now getting her driver’s license. Since Bev and Puddles started earlier, their own kids are moving out into the world. Elderly parents are dying off, the ex-class president has a dozen kids (for his own disconcerting reasons), and Tom has undergone a major life-change himself. Then a somewhat foreshadowed tragedy turns Snowy’s world upside-down and she has to come out of her cocoon and get a grip on life. But at least she has the help of a reunion with her best friends.
While it’s a good and mostly satisfying read, I have to admit this volume isn’t nearly as engrossing as the first one, perhaps because we already know the main characters so well. Snowy’s psychological disability also seems a bit stage-managed. But the author does a good job with the regret-laden bitter-sweet quality of life’s decisions and the effects they have on everyone else. And, since I’m only four or five years younger than Snowy, I found it easy to relate to her experiences, even though my own life has been nothing like hers. In any case, the last couple of chapters, with their harvest of coincidences (which are nevertheless believable) and slightly madcap action, are worth the price of admission.
In the first of three episodes, Snowy goes off to Bennington while the beautiful Bev, her closest friend since Second Grade, enters a secretarial school in Boston. (There weren’t a lot of career choices for even bright girls back then.) Puddles, the fearless member of the trio, starts nursing school, also in the city. Tom Forbes, with whom Snowy is deeply in love but from whom she forces herself to separate in an effort to keep moving forward and to not be merely an adjunct to someone else, becomes a shop major at a local teacher’s college but shortly switches to English, to everyone’s surprise. But, as they expect -- especially the girls -- most of the group are soon married and having kids. Snowy herself wants to be a poet, though she knows she won’t be able to support herself at that and will have to have some sort of job as well, so she begins working summers and non-resident terms for a publisher in Boston. But then, while researching a local poet for her senior thesis, she meets Alan Sutherland, an architectural historian working for a preservation project, and as soon as she graduates, she’s married, too. They will have to live cheaply for awhile, of course, but life is looking good for all of them.
Then the narrative jumps to the early ‘70s. Snowy has had several poetry collections published, Alan has moved up in his profession sufficiently to take some of the pressure off their budget, Bev has married her high school sweetheart (one of them, anyway) who is now a successful Connecticut lawyer, and Puddles is living in South Carolina, the wife of a semi-wealthy real estate developer who had been one of her patients at the hospital in Boston. But while they keep up with each other by mail, and on special occasions by long-distance phone calls, circumstances and geography are such that the three haven’t actually met face-to-face in a decade. And Snowy and Alan decide it’s time to finally have a child of their own.
The third section of the book moves another fifteen years into the future. The gang are nearing their 50th birthdays, Alan has thrown over the history business to attempt to make a living from a general store (he’s a classic burnout), Snowy is afflicted with agoraphobia (the reason for which is hinted at but never really developed), and their daughter is now getting her driver’s license. Since Bev and Puddles started earlier, their own kids are moving out into the world. Elderly parents are dying off, the ex-class president has a dozen kids (for his own disconcerting reasons), and Tom has undergone a major life-change himself. Then a somewhat foreshadowed tragedy turns Snowy’s world upside-down and she has to come out of her cocoon and get a grip on life. But at least she has the help of a reunion with her best friends.
While it’s a good and mostly satisfying read, I have to admit this volume isn’t nearly as engrossing as the first one, perhaps because we already know the main characters so well. Snowy’s psychological disability also seems a bit stage-managed. But the author does a good job with the regret-laden bitter-sweet quality of life’s decisions and the effects they have on everyone else. And, since I’m only four or five years younger than Snowy, I found it easy to relate to her experiences, even though my own life has been nothing like hers. In any case, the last couple of chapters, with their harvest of coincidences (which are nevertheless believable) and slightly madcap action, are worth the price of admission.
July 7, 2014
2014: I still love it. I love all of them, and I love visiting with them again. I love how it starts in the 60s, in a time where they had to buy fake wedding rings to spend a night in a hotel and she worries every time that they'll be caught by the hotel cop and sent to jail, and ends in the 80s, where Bev's daughter doesn't even need to get married.
I wish we knew Alan better - I love the first time they met, and I love the beginning of their relationship, but by skipping around so much, we lose him as an adult. Also, I hate the description of Tom as Santa at first - even though he's only 50, I keep seeing someone much older and it drives me nuts. Cut your damn hair, Tom. Love that he still finds a place to hook his glasses for sex, though.
This time around, I almost feel like I'm going to hunt for Bev's book. I don't like her as much as Snowy or Puddles, but I think she's worth it.
2011: Snowy grows up. I loved it, they all still seem so real to me, disappointments and unfulfilled promises and all. It's weird to think of them as nearing 50, after spending so much time with them in high school. And now I have to track down Henrietta Snow, but it's not in my local library system, so I have to get creative and patient. Sigh.
I wish we knew Alan better - I love the first time they met, and I love the beginning of their relationship, but by skipping around so much, we lose him as an adult. Also, I hate the description of Tom as Santa at first - even though he's only 50, I keep seeing someone much older and it drives me nuts. Cut your damn hair, Tom. Love that he still finds a place to hook his glasses for sex, though.
This time around, I almost feel like I'm going to hunt for Bev's book. I don't like her as much as Snowy or Puddles, but I think she's worth it.
2011: Snowy grows up. I loved it, they all still seem so real to me, disappointments and unfulfilled promises and all. It's weird to think of them as nearing 50, after spending so much time with them in high school. And now I have to track down Henrietta Snow, but it's not in my local library system, so I have to get creative and patient. Sigh.
June 4, 2012
Be careful what you wish for! I read The Cheerleader in high school and absolutely loved it. I wanted to be Snowy because, despite her insecurities, she was an honor student, a cheerleader and got the boy of her dreams. I often wondered what happened to her, Tom, Bev, Puddles and the rest of the gang, and how her life turned out. Unfortunately, I found out in Snowy. Of course, I could have saved myself some reading time by skipping The Cheerleader altogether since the author recapped it -- nay, even went so far as to insert passages ...verbatim ... from the Cheerleader in Snowy
I'm not saying it was the worst book I ever read; it was readable once I got past the first part, but IMO incredibly boring and predictable. Guess that's what I get for having high expectations of a sequel.
I'm not saying it was the worst book I ever read; it was readable once I got past the first part, but IMO incredibly boring and predictable. Guess that's what I get for having high expectations of a sequel.
March 6, 2012
According to my book journal notes from my first reading of this, I found the last third of the book a bit contrived. Funny how going through it all this time, I didn't think that at all. I was just there for Snowy's ride, relishing the details that MacDougall packs in. (I love Puddles' late-1980s Banana Republic outfit, exactly what one would have found during the the safari look days of Banana Republic.)
The afternoon when Snowy and Alan meet is one of my favorite scenes ever.
Last read: 2-5-07
The afternoon when Snowy and Alan meet is one of my favorite scenes ever.
Last read: 2-5-07
January 19, 2009
The sequel to The Cheerleader was a fairly good read. I found myself skimming some of it - The book takes up when Snowy graduates from high school and goes until she is almost 50. There are a lot of skipped times in life - I didn't tear through this one as fast as I did the first book. I did like it though. I'll be starting the third book in the series soon - It is a lot longer! I hope I finish it faster than Almost Moon.
April 6, 2009
This was a fine sequal to The Cheerleader, and again I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and was very invested in the characters. My major complaint is the fact that the book tried to cover too much time in too little space, I wish it had been separated into two or three more to give us more of a chance to become invested in the people in Henrietta's life after she left high school.
January 15, 2019
So thrilled to find a sequel to "The Cheerleader" after all these years! Snowy's journey continues and I was so happy to follow her as her life began to unfold. I read "The Cheerleader" as an adolescent and couldn't help but fall in love with Snowy and all her friends. My fondness for them grew reading the sequel, as the realities of life begin coming at them. Thoroughly enjoyed this book!
October 8, 2007
When I saw this book in the bookstore, and realized it was the sequel to The Cheerleader, I bought it--even though it was in hardback, which is something that I try not to do. Not as good as The Cheerleader, but I didn't really expect it to be, and did like it.
September 25, 2014
A welcome return of a favorite character (and her friends) and a solid bridge into her middle years. The last few chapters are bittersweet, but leave you confident that there is more to come from MacDougall.
August 31, 2024
When I first read this 8 years ago I was disappointed, it wasn't the follow up book I'd been hoping for, I disliked the time jumps and wanted to spend more time with Snowy in college and after. But now, re-reading it all these long years later I find that I do like it! So I've updated my rating.
October 28, 2008
Book #2 in the series, and my husband bought me all three in the series....more of the same, moving into college and beyond with Snowy and her 2 best friends, I liked this one better than the first.
January 27, 2011
It was okay, a little predictable.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews