Miss American Pie: A Diary of Love, Secrets, and Growing Up in the ’70s

last updated 8 January 2015

On the third day of January, 1972, a 12-year-old girl waiting out her Christmas vacation entered the following status report in a diary she had started on New Year's Day: 'œMy name is Margaret Earline Sartor. I'm in the seventh grade at Robert E. Lee High in Montgomery, La., the United States of America, the Earth, the Universe. I am bored to death.' Fortunately, Margaret carried on. By Jan. 26, she had turned to 'œmaking a table out of old beer cans.' By May 7, she was focused on a boy named Cliff. By March 15, 1974, she was kissing a boy named Chris good night at the front door and wondering how God felt about the whole thing. On Aug. 8 of that year, she was less pensive: 'œPresident Nixon resigned. Made appointment to get my hair cut.'

Miss American Pie is 'œthe most amazing book,' said Carolyn See in The Washington Post. Essentially a pared-down version of six years of Sartor's diaries, it's more than a 'œportrait' of adolescence: 'œIt is adolescence.' When history makes an appearance, it arrives unfiltered. The 1970s' 'œgreat resurgence of Protestant evangelism' in the South descends on the neighbors' living room and sets Margaret to speaking in tongues and prowling for boys at prayer meetings. You can't help but love her. She's a 'œtough little tomboy,' a contemplative homecoming queen, and a comic heroine, 'œreal as snakes.'