Brooklyn Rose

I've read other books my Ann Rinaldi, but this one is the best. It's about Rose, who is fifteen and a young lady sometimes, and just a girl at others. Her parents are in debt and need to marry her off in order to take a load off the family, so they set her up with Rene, who is easily twice Rose's age. (INSANE!!! I KNOW! THANK GOD FOR THE 21ST CENTURY AND WOMEN'S RIGHTS!) Rose is very apprehensive (I would be too) but she agrees to marry him because her friend told her he holds the mortgage on her parents' plantation.
Rene and Rose get married and go back home to Rene's house in Brooklyn. Rose feels very out of place, like anyone normal would. Can you imagine being forced into marriage and moving away from everything you grew up around at 15? Slowly, though, she's starting to love Rene. She's still very immature, though, and thinks because Rene holds the mortgage, she shouldn't fall in love with him. That's the main conflict in the book, I guess, in case you're wondering.
Also, this book is based around real people. Ann Rinaldi's grandparents or great-grandparents (can't remember which) were Rose and Rene. Rene married Rose at fifteen, and the basic storyline is true. The author says she even heard a story about how Rose had to be called in to nurse her baby from skipping rope! (Oh yeah, she gets pregnant in the last half of the book too. Wait, let me put it in 1900's speak: she becomes "with child.")
I liked this book, and I think other girls would too because
a) it's large print and pretty short, and
b) you can really relate with Rose. Not the whole married and pregnant (sorry: "with child") thing before age twenty, but feeling like everyone else wants you to be adult and have this responsibility and you feel like you've been forced to grow up too fast.
Anyway, yes, good book.