Plan A
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
A sixteen-year-old girl’s road trip across the country to get an abortion becomes a transformative journey of vulnerability, strength, and above all, choice. From the acclaimed author of A Heart in a Body in the World, this is both an achingly tender love story and a bold, badly needed battle cry about bodily autonomy and the experiences that connect us.
Ivy can’t entirely believe it when the plus sign appears on the test. She didn’t even know it was possible from . . . what happened. But it is, and now she is, and instead of spending the summer working at the local drugstore and swooning over her boyfriend, Lorenzo, suddenly she’s planning a cross-country road trip to her grandmother’s house on the West Coast, where she can legally obtain an abortion.
Escaping her small Texas town and the judgment of her friends and neighbors, Ivy hits the road with Lorenzo, who, determined to make the best of their “abortion road trip love story,” has transformed the journey into a whirlwind tour of the world: all the way from Paris, Texas, to Rome, Oregon . . . and every rest-stop diner and corny roadside attraction along the way.
And while Ivy can’t run from the incessant pressure of others’ opinions about her body or from her own expectations and insecurities, she discovers a new world of healing and hope. As the women she encounters share their stories, she chips away at the stigma, silence, and shame surrounding reproductive rights while those collective experiences guide her to her own rightful destination.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A pregnant 16-year-old in an ultraconservative town reckons with contemporary affairs surrounding abortions and bodily autonomy in this timely novel by Caletti (The Epic Story of Every Living Thing). When high school junior Ivy learns that she's pregnant, she knows she wants to get an abortion, but the procedure is illegal after six weeks in Texas. With her mother's support, Ivy and her steadfast boyfriend Lorenzo prepare to road-trip to Oregon, where her grandmother lives, for the operation. Before she leaves, however, a classmate discovers her secret, and soon, the whole community knows of Ivy's plan. Lorenzo decides to make the trip an around-the-world adventure, planning stops in cities such as Rome, Tex.; Lima, Okla.; and Moscow, Kan., to visit friends and relatives along the way. Through them, Ivy learns about other people's experiences with abortion. The cruelty that Ivy is subjected to by her community is sometimes difficult to read, but her surety of her right to choose never wavers. Through Ivy's frank first-person narration, Caletti offers a matter-of-fact exploration of abortion and its use cases, interweaving myriad perspectives on pregnancy and body agency with a deft and nonjudgmental approach. Main characters read as white. Ages 14–up.
Customer Reviews
Thought provoking
I was truly surprised when I saw this book in an upscale Pre-K to 12th grade private school in Houston, Texas. I downloaded the book and read it in one day. Once upon a time I was a pregnant 16 year old, but I had my baby and struggled for many years, through many tears, unable to give him everything he deserved (he’s a phenomenal adult now, thanks to a great support system!). Like Ivy, I’ve heard myriad stories of abortion, adoption, and the struggles of doing without in order to provide for a little person. This book highlighted how opinions are simply beliefs based on what you know so far. The perspectives of the women with unwanted pregnancies were clearly detailed whether you agreed with them or not. I wanted to see just one of the townspeople explain and defend their hateful, judgmental behavior knowing, as Christians, Jesus’ response to the adulteress woman in John 8:7. When “Christian” behavior directly opposes Jesus’ behavior, people who are unsure are turned off of religion. We saw this in Ivy, and we see it in Americans everyday.