Lori Aurelia Williams, the acclaimed author of When Kambia Elaine Flew in From Neptune, presents an honest and endearing YA novel about what happens when a headstrong seventeen year old from Houston, Texas convinces her boyfriend to marry her, and then finds out that marriage isn't quite what she had in mind.
Desperate to escape a neglectful mother and her string of boyfriends, Maxine Banks pretends she is pregnant in order to marry her boyfriend, Brian, despite warnings of his reluctance. The cracks in this unsteady foundation soon appear when Brian takes up with another girl, leaving Maxine to care for his younger cousin. But Maxine is nothing if not determined and willing to learn from her mistakes, and as she straddles the worlds of high school and adulthood, she draws strength and support from a community she didn't even know she had.