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Don't Slam the Door When You Go
Three teen-age girls run away from their homes in Florida to look for a better life in a Montana ghost town.
198 pages
First published September 1, 1972
14 people want to read
About the author
Barbara Corcoran
75 books44 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
This is not the Shark Tank celebrity, but an author of children's books. The books are mostly realistic fiction about older children and teens who come from families that are dysfunctional or at least face interesting challenges.
Also used the pseudonym Paige Dixon and Gail Hamilton.
This is not the Shark Tank celebrity, but an author of children's books. The books are mostly realistic fiction about older children and teens who come from families that are dysfunctional or at least face interesting challenges.
Also used the pseudonym Paige Dixon and Gail Hamilton.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 8, 2009
I first read this book in upper-elementary school, probably around 1975. I loved this book so much that I have bought three copies over the years, losing the first two somehow. I had realized by the age of 10 or 11 that I loved books about travel and running away from home. I guess it was because I was so unhappy as a child. I think this book would be a little dated for teenagers to read today but it remains one of my all-time favorite books and I still read it again several times a year. I know this isn't really a review of the book but I felt the other poster had written such a good review that I couldn't top it so I decided to instead write about my love for a good great young-adult novel. I will point out that there are certain sentences from the book that have truly stuck with me and even during the years that I didn't have a copy of the book I would think of them at certain times in my life and they seemed to give me strength.
November 10, 2008
This was sort of an odd little book, set in the 1970s, about three teenage girls who want more out of life than what they have. With the blessing of one girl's father and unbeknownst to the other parents, they take off and head to a ghost town in Montana, where they clean out some of the abandoned buildings and make them into houses. Their attempts to live off the land don't go quite as well as they'd hoped and two of them end up having to get jobs to bring in the other needed items, and Judith, the third girl, is the one left behind to hold down the fort. She questions her value to the group because she's not increasing their cash flow.
When travelers from a commune come across her path, she's immediately smitten with Eric, their leader. But as the members of the commune are harassed by the people in the nearby town, decisions have to be made all around.
It was interesting to see what drove the girls to make this life-altering decision and also to see the decisions they made at the end of the book.
When travelers from a commune come across her path, she's immediately smitten with Eric, their leader. But as the members of the commune are harassed by the people in the nearby town, decisions have to be made all around.
It was interesting to see what drove the girls to make this life-altering decision and also to see the decisions they made at the end of the book.
August 24, 2010
Cute illustrations.
August 10, 2023
They had talked about going for months, but it wasn't until the maid fell down the elevator shaft that Judith was really ready.
You have to admit, that's an attention-getting first line! (The maid survives, albeit with a badly broken leg, but Judith gets officially fed up with her self-centered rich parents after sharing this news and getting a response of "Anyone we know?", before they immediately turn back to their dinner party upon learning it's "just" one of the building's service staff -- all African-American staff, it should be noted -- and she didn't even die.)
Anyway, this was just the escapism my soul needed. I loved these three rather different friends and their book-learning-based plan to live off the land in some long-abandoned, mostly-falling-down miners' shacks they read about.
The first 50 pages or so focus on their background and the road trip to get there -- including a somewhat unnecessary, imo, side diversion where they get arrested for pointing a gun at some boys who harassed them, only to be let go without consequence when they prove it was a BB gun -- and then there is lots of lovely focus on setting up camp and doing their best to plant a garden, fish and gather food, even though it quickly becomes apparent that this life is QUITE hard work and they need to buy more supplies than they bargained for, which leads to two of them getting jobs in town.
Eventually, they befriend a van full of hippies who've just arrived in the area -- drug free (and vegetarian!) hippies, except for the one addict they picked up because they felt sorry for her 10-year-old son and are trying to get clean -- led by a former teacher who plans to buy some land nearby and start a commune once his inheritance money clears. The new people bring some much-appreciated help, though also cause some tension when Judith develops a crush on John, who instead turns his attention to her prettier friend.
I especially love that even though they're like "we can't tell anyone, we have to keep it quiet because we don't exactly have permission to be here," all the people in the small town nearby, including the sheriff, are like "So how's life in the ghost town? Everything going all right?" ("Wait, you KNOW we're up there??" / "Oh, sure. It's fine, you won't hurt anything." Can you even imagine).
Except, of course, for the one frothing gun nut who hates hippies with a passion and is full on bunker-full-of-food prepared for a civil war. Honestly, it was kind of stunning to see a caricature who could so easily have been pulled from the present day, if you exchanged the anti-commie sentiment for racism, existing in a book from 50 years ago.
Anyway, I thought it ended in a very satisfactory way*, so 5 stars all around! I wish this author were still well known; her string of hits is impressive. (Can we talk about how much I hate this cover, though? Impressive for a random doodle, unacceptable for any other purpose.)
*the ending:
You have to admit, that's an attention-getting first line! (The maid survives, albeit with a badly broken leg, but Judith gets officially fed up with her self-centered rich parents after sharing this news and getting a response of "Anyone we know?", before they immediately turn back to their dinner party upon learning it's "just" one of the building's service staff -- all African-American staff, it should be noted -- and she didn't even die.)
Anyway, this was just the escapism my soul needed. I loved these three rather different friends and their book-learning-based plan to live off the land in some long-abandoned, mostly-falling-down miners' shacks they read about.
The first 50 pages or so focus on their background and the road trip to get there -- including a somewhat unnecessary, imo, side diversion where they get arrested for pointing a gun at some boys who harassed them, only to be let go without consequence when they prove it was a BB gun -- and then there is lots of lovely focus on setting up camp and doing their best to plant a garden, fish and gather food, even though it quickly becomes apparent that this life is QUITE hard work and they need to buy more supplies than they bargained for, which leads to two of them getting jobs in town.
Eventually, they befriend a van full of hippies who've just arrived in the area -- drug free (and vegetarian!) hippies, except for the one addict they picked up because they felt sorry for her 10-year-old son and are trying to get clean -- led by a former teacher who plans to buy some land nearby and start a commune once his inheritance money clears. The new people bring some much-appreciated help, though also cause some tension when Judith develops a crush on John, who instead turns his attention to her prettier friend.
I especially love that even though they're like "we can't tell anyone, we have to keep it quiet because we don't exactly have permission to be here," all the people in the small town nearby, including the sheriff, are like "So how's life in the ghost town? Everything going all right?" ("Wait, you KNOW we're up there??" / "Oh, sure. It's fine, you won't hurt anything." Can you even imagine).
Except, of course, for the one frothing gun nut who hates hippies with a passion and is full on bunker-full-of-food prepared for a civil war. Honestly, it was kind of stunning to see a caricature who could so easily have been pulled from the present day, if you exchanged the anti-commie sentiment for racism, existing in a book from 50 years ago.
Anyway, I thought it ended in a very satisfactory way*, so 5 stars all around! I wish this author were still well known; her string of hits is impressive. (Can we talk about how much I hate this cover, though? Impressive for a random doodle, unacceptable for any other purpose.)
*the ending:
March 11, 2024
My favorite book of all time.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews