Suddenly, the school is divided into the rich kid ‘Follys’ and the poorer ‘Scrubs,’ with everyone else caught in the middle.

But now a group of Scrub Harbor citizens are trying to change the town’s name to the ‘classier’ Folly Bay, and their crusade has filtered down to their kids. With keen insight into teenage life, Ellen Wittlinger delivers a story of adolescence that is fierce and funny and ultimately transforming even as it explores the pain of growing up.Īs if the students of Scrub Harbor High don’t have enough to worry about: Christine is quickly losing her friend Georgie to Ricardo Nelson can’t connect with Shaquanda Adam’s role as the new kid is tougher than he thought and O’Neill’s controversial poem has electrified the school while making life unbearable for his football star brother, Quincy. On the sandy beaches by the Bluefish Wharf Inn, John realizes just how Hard Love can be. Desperately hoping to fix things, John convinces Marisol to come with him to a zine conference on Cape Cod. Unfortunately, John mistakes this growing intimacy for love, and a disastrous date to his junior prom leaves that friendship in ruins. While at first their friendship is based on zines, dysfuntional families, and dreams of escape, soon both John and Marisol begin to shed their protective shells. It’s no wonder John writes articles like ‘Interview with the Stepfather’ and ‘Memoirs from Hell.’ The only release he finds is in homemade zines like the amazing Escape Velocity by Marisol, a self proclaimed ‘Puerto Rican Cuban Yankee Lesbian.’ Haning around the Boston Tower Records for the new issue of Escape Velocity, John meets Marisol and a Hard Love is born. Since his parents’ divorce, John’s mother hasn’t touched him, her new fianc wants them to move away, and his father would rather be anywhere than at Friday night dinner with his son.

Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger