Never Pa's Girl

15-year-old Modiene is the daughter of a hill-farmer living in one of America's strongly patriarchal rural communities. Mo fights against her father's attempts to control her life. She's strongly attracted to Jake and defies her father in order to see him. When, innocently, she becomes pregnant she must give up her dreams of a college education and become part of the life she'd planned to escape. Branscum successfully convinces the reader of the hardships which unite the community and the families who sustain it. Modiene's initiation into this milieu, with the birth of her daughter, is less convincing and the resulting sentimentality jars against the realism of the remainder of the book.