Mr and Mrs Bo Jo Jones


Mr and Mrs Bo Jo Jones is a 1967 novel written by Ann Head. It was initially marketed to an adult audience but was marketed as a young adult novel for its paperback release the following year. The work, along with S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders, is credited with launching new realism in young adult literature.
Ann Head was the pseudonym of author Anne Wales Christensen, who was born in Beaufort, South Carolina, on October 30, 1915. She was married first to Howard Head and then to Dr. Stanley Morse Jr. and lived in South Carolina. She was also a mentor to Pat Conroy. Instead of graduating college, she became a freelance writer at age 28. She died at age 52 of a cerebral aneurysm on May 7, 1968.
Even though Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones was marketed for young adults, Ann Head did not consider herself a young adult writer, and wrote the book for an adult audience. However, because the novel sold better to young adults, it is now considered part of the genre of Young Adult Literature.
In 1971 the novel was adapted to a made-for-TV movie by the same name starring Desi Arnaz Jr. and Christopher Norris.

Synopsis

July Greher Jones tells the story of the first year of her marriage to her high school boyfriend, the football hero Boswell Johnson "Bo Jo" Jones. When the story begins, 16-year-old July and 17-year-old Bo Jo are high school seniors preparing for college. The upper-middle-class Grehers plan for July to attend an elite college; Bo Jo's working-class family hopes that he will get a football scholarship and be the first in his family to attend college. July's parents do not approve of her spending so much time with Bo Jo, and try to get her to date other boys. Although July is not certain of her feelings for Bo Jo, she likes him more than other boys she has dated, and the couple continues to see each other exclusively.
One night, after consuming alcohol at a party where Bo Jo's former girlfriend Alicia is present and makes July feel jealous, Bo Jo and July end up having sex. July learns she is pregnant just as Bo Jo receives his letter of acceptance and football scholarship from Georgia Tech. The couple hide the pregnancy from their parents, secretly drive across the state line, and get married. Eventually they inform their parents, causing Bo Jo's parents to throw him out of the house and July's parents to threaten a forced annulment and an illegal abortion. Both sets of parents reluctantly accept the marriage. The couple are forced to leave school, and live for a disastrous short time with Bo Jo's parents, who blame July for ruining Bo Jo's college opportunity. July's parents then arrange an apartment for the couple and a job for Bo Jo at July's father's bank. The only truly supportive adult is July's grandmother.
July and Bo Jo soon find themselves missing their old life of school, football, and social events, and begin to bicker with each other and spend time apart. Lonely and bored, July begins writing to a Princeton student named Horace, who, unlike Bo Jo, is from her social class and shares July's interests in music and literature. Horace lives out of town and is unaware that July is now married with a baby on the way, and July avoids telling him, even when his letters begin to show a romantic interest. July also meets and bonds with another young teenage bride, Lou, who is an aspiring singer and actress recently married to an older man. July and Lou's friendship comes to an end when Lou becomes unexpectedly pregnant and, unlike July, decides to have an illegal abortion without telling her husband. Lou's husband finds out and angrily hits Lou, who leaves him and moves to New York, where she becomes a nightclub singer and the mistress of a wealthy man. July realizes that unlike Lou, she does want her baby, which is beginning to move in her womb.
Bo Jo meanwhile has sought solace by spending more time out drinking with his old friends Charlie and Alicia, whom July does not like, especially since Alicia still seems to be romantically pursuing Bo Jo. After Bo Jo and July argue, he leaves the house and later comes home with a lipstick smudge on his neck, causing July to suspect him of cheating on her with Alicia. Two months before July is due, she confronts Alicia and afterwards goes into early labor. The premature baby dies a few days after birth.
Bo Jo and July's parents now suggest that the couple should split up and resume the lives they had before, with July attending a boarding school near Princeton and Bo Jo getting his football scholarship back. But Bo Jo and July realize that their shared grief over the lost baby has brought them closer together, and now they are truly in love and do not want to break up. Three years later, Bo Jo is attending college, living in the married students' housing with his wife July, who works in the bursar's office to help pay their expenses.

Characters

Kirkus Reviews reviewed the book, stating that "Ann Head deals all this out with a determinedly light hand, but her teenagers for all their troubles are all-American, and appealing--and some young marrieds may empathize, some older ones sympathize."

Movie adaptation

The novel was adapted for a made-for-TV movie of the same name in 1971.. , Independent Press-Telegram 20th Century Fox and Lester Linsk produced the movie. Starring Desi Arnaz Jr. and Christopher Norris, it first aired on Tuesday, November 16, 1971 as the ABC Movie of the Week, and was the second-most watched primetime television show in the United States for the week being the third most watched movie on U.S. television during 1971 after ABC's Brian's Song and CBS's A Death of Innocence with a Nielsen rating of 30.2 and an audience share of 45%.