Mary Alice Dowdel Facts

Mary Alice is fifteen years old at the beginning of the novel. Her parents are so poor that they cannot afford to keep her, and so she is shipped off to live with her Grandma in a rural town south of Chicago. Mary Alice dreads the time she will spend in the town, dismissing it as a hick town, and she dreads Grandma, whom she regards with a degree of fear and confusion.

Mary Alice is very attached to her older brother Joey, whom she idolizes. Joey had always been with her during their week-long stays at Grandma's, and so without Joey, Mary Alice feels very alone. Her only comforts are her Philco radio and Bootsie, her cat.

Mary Alice is "normal" and sensible, unlike many of the citizens of the town. Like any teenage girl coming to a new town, she is self-conscious and extremely nervous about how the girls and boys will perceive her at school. She has developed new romantic feelings for boys, and especially for the handsome new boy to town, Royce McNabb.

Mary Alice comes to appreciate Grandma's wisdom, and understand that Grandma acts out of kindness and love. Also through the course of the novel, Mary Alice matures and is more confident in herself. She writes "Newsy Notes," a brief blurb for the local paper, and in the Epilogue the reader learns that she becomes a journalist. Unlike most of the other members of the town, Mary Alice speaks and writes in proper English.