REVIEW: A Dangerous Education by Megan Chance

JennieB Reviews / Book Reviews1950s / Historical fiction4 Comments

Dear Megan Chance:

I first became a fan of your work with your unusual and dark romances written in the 1990s. Since you’ve transitioned to historical fiction, I have read a couple of your books, and appreciated the different settings and subject matter in each one. You certainly don’t write the same book twice!

I was drawn to the blurb for A Dangerous Education right away:

A reformist teacher. A dangerous student clique. A powerful novel about secrets and redemption set in the shadows of McCarthy-era America.

Rosemary Chivers is haunted by the choices she made as a teenager?and by those made for her by a controlling mother. Now, in the Cold War era of conformity and suspicion, Rosemary is a modern new teacher at a school for troubled girls, where she challenges the narrow curriculum meant to tame restless young minds. She also keeps a devastating secret. She knows one of the students is the child she gave up. But which one?

Ignoring warnings, Rosemary forms an impenetrable bond with the three girls who are the right age: shrewd runaway Maisie, alcohol-indulging Sandra, and overly flirtatious Jean. But these are no ordinary girls, and what begins as an effort to bring closure to her own rebellious youth soon spirals dangerously out of control.

Rosemary is prepared to do anything to find her daughter. What she isn’t prepared for are the deadly consequences that come with discovery?or just how wicked wayward girls can be.

When we first meet Rosemary, it’s 1954, and she is stumbling out of a hotel one morning after a one-night stand with a traveling salesman. It doesn’t appear that this is an unusual situation for Rosemary. She then goes to work at the Yakima, Washington high school where she teaches, but leaves when she can’t reach her mother on the phone – she has a premonition that something is wrong. Rosemary has already been told that she’s not being invited back to teach the following year (her reputation has gotten around town) and since it’s late in the school year, she decides to just walk away. Rosemary is 34 years old, but the rebellious streak from her youth is still strong.

Rosemary gets on a bus to Seattle and arrives at her parents’ house to find that they are returning from a doctor’s appointment – her mother has heart problems that her parents have kept from her. Concerned about her mother, with whom Rosemary has a very contentious relationship, and at loose ends after leaving her job so abruptly, she impulsively agrees to move back home for the summer, and to interview for a position at a small local school for girls, Mercer Rocks. Rosemary initially doesn’t understand why her mother set up the interview or why she is so insistent that Rosemary work at Mercer Rocks.

The story then shifts to 1936; Rosemary is 16 and has snuck out to a party where she meets David, an enthusiastic young man who intrigues her with his political ideas (and his good looks). David’s father is a custodian at the University of Washington, where Rosemary’s father is a professor. Rosemary and David quickly fall in young love despite (or in part because of?) the disapproval of Rosemary’s conservative parents, who dislike both David’s working class origins and his socialist leanings. Rosemary eventually runs away from home. Shortly after, events conspire to separate her from David forever.

The present day Rosemary has never really gotten over the doomed romance or the daughter she was forced to give up – she exists in a sort of stasis, making bad choices and floating along. Against her mother’s wishes, Rosemary studied Home Economics in college and now teaches it. It’s not a good fit for Rosemary; she is far from the domestic type herself. But rebellion even at the expense of self-fulfillment has been Rosemary’s way of life for a long time; she doesn’t know how to change it.

At Mercer Rocks, which turns out to be a school for “troubled” girls, Rosemary is dismayed to find the curriculum rather old-fashioned, even for 1954. She soon catches the attention of the trio mentioned in the blurb – Maisie, Sandra and Jean. The three are inseparable and vaguely menacing; Rosemary is warned to be wary of them by several other members of the staff. But they are also capable of charm, and Rosemary finds herself warming to them as she settles into Mercer Rocks. When she finds out that one of the three is the daughter she gave up for adoption. Rosemary goes from flattered by their attention to obsessed with them, an obsession that is mutual and ultimately dangerous.

I really liked the setting of A Dangerous Education – it was so rich with interesting details. The issue of abortion comes up and the reality of it at that time is starkly portrayed. There is a good deal of discussion about the perceived threat of Communism, McCarthyism and the House Un-American Activities Committee (Jean’s father is an anti-Red congressman). Rosemary fears the HUAC because of her past activities; she has to lie on her application to Mercer Rocks about whether she’s ever been involved with any socialist organizations.

Finally, the threat of the atomic bomb feels realistically portrayed – there are mentions of bomb shelters, a school practice drill with laughably inadequate instructions about how to protect oneself in the event of a real nuclear event, and the students’ very real anxiety about their futures with the threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over their heads.

There were a few aspects of the story that didn’t work as well for me. For one, the three girls (who call themselves “Rosemary’s Flowers”) become increasingly ominous in a way that was a bit too melodramatic. They were, at the end of the day, three 17-year-old girls. There were a limited number of ways they could hurt and control Rosemary. No doubt her search for her daughter made it harder for her to walk away from the situation, but Rosemary makes some very poor decisions that make things worse and that had me frustrated with her.

I also thought the HUAC/Red Scare issues were underutilized. When Rosemary is 16, she is part of that scene due to her association with David. She retains an enthusiasm for protest songs (Rosemary plays the guitar), but it’s never clear whether she really has much of a political affinity for the politics. She’s definitely not conservative, but she doesn’t seem to have much in the way of real political values (beyond a nascent feminism, at least). Which is okay, but I would have liked it to have been clearer. As it was Rosemary often felt defined by what she was against, not what she was for.

What becomes clear is that Rosemary strongly identifies with these girls because of her past, but in the end Maisie, Sandra and Jean weren’t like her. They were genuinely troubled girls (the source of their issues was rather hazy, though), and self destructive in a way that defied Rosemary’s attempts to help.

Ultimately, A Dangerous Education was one of those books that really absorbed me when I was reading it but felt slightly less compelling in retrospect. My grade for it is a straight B.

Best,

Jennie

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Jennie

has been an avid if often frustrated romance reader for the past 15 years. In that time she's read a lot of good romances, a few great ones, and, unfortunately, a whole lot of dreck. Many of her favorite authors (Ivory, Kinsale, Gaffney, Williamson, Ibbotson) have moved onto other genres or produce new books only rarely, so she's had to expand her horizons a bit. Newer authors she enjoys include Julie Ann Long, Megan Hart and J.R. Ward, and she eagerly anticipates each new Sookie Stackhouse novel. Strong prose and characterization go a long way with her, though if they are combined with an unusual plot or setting, all the better. When she's not reading romance she can usually be found reading historical non-fiction.

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