Unalienable Rights

This book is a 2006 Cybil Award Nominee for YA Fiction.

Spending the worst summer of her life dressing up as an 18th century farm girl at the Morrisville Historic Village is actually kind of a relief to Betsy Odell. At least at work, she can forget about her mother’s death, her brother’s pain, her history professor father’s indifference, and the fact that she’s lost her best friend, Mary, her boyfriend, Brandon, and any sense that anything is ever going to be right, ever again. This was supposed to be a great summer. Betsy has had a real boyfriend for six months, and this was supposed to be the magical summer when everything went right. Instead, it’s anything but. When everything fall apart, the friends she thought were true are nowhere to be found. Betsy decides it’s time to ditch everything familiar and assert her right to happiness. Even if it means alienating all of her old crowd and trying to find her place in a new history with James and Liza, her friends from Morrisville, Betsy wants to make her own way. The Pursuit of Happiness is a funny, poignant and memorable look at a life filled with losses, and the possibility that we can take what is lost, and find not replacements, but space in our hearts for something new.