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    Bad Girl: A Play
    Bad Girl: A Play
    Bad Girl: A Play
    Ebook80 pages40 minutes

    Bad Girl: A Play

    By Karen Truesdell Riehl

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    "Though the play reads very well as a novel, it deserves to be on stage, especially in schools. Fine writing, but also a solid message."
    Grady Harp

    Homes for unwed mothers disappeared when contraceptives became readily available and abortion legal. But in the early 1950s a girl who became pregnant "out of wedlock," was often treated as an outcast, a "bad girl," who "got herself pregnant," and needed to be hidden away from polite society. The fictional Safe Haven Home for Unwed Mothers provides shelter from a judgmental society, but reveals its hypocrisy as well. The young women of this play come from all levels of society, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, sharing only the plight of their unwanted pregnancies. Marty is large and loud, hiding her vulnerability behind imitations of movie stars. Tinker is Marty's go-fer, a tiny girl from the hills with a huge heart, who never learned to read. Mary is the oldest. She made the mistake of falling in love with her minister. Rebecca's a southern belle who swears she's a good girl who was raped and claims to be shocked by the behavior of the other girls. She finds comfort in secretly reading dirty books. Kameela is frightened and silent, planning to do what she thinks will make her a good girl again. Sarah watches and learns. This is a story of frightened and angry young women, faced with the decision of whether to keep or give up their babies for adoption, but finding strength in a friendship built by mutual hardship and gallows humor.

    Review by Lola, for GoodReads:
    I'd heard of women in the fifties being "sent away" if they got pregnant out of wedlock, but I didn't really know much about it. What a difference from our culture today. It would have been impossible for these women to imagine a time when there would be a TV show called "Sixteen and Pregnant" that brought attention to young unwed mothers and made celebrities out of them. My favorite girls were Marty, Mary, and Sarah. I loved Marty's wit and spunk, and Mary was just so sweet. Her backstory was probably the saddest to me, and I liked the scene between the social worker and Mary's minister. I was like, "Oh, dude, you guilty of something, aren't you? I know you are." I just got so mad for Mary, but I also admired her. She seemed so level-headed about everything. My favorite part was probably Sarah's letter to Marty. I hated that the girls couldn't keep in contact with each other even if they wanted to. It would've been nice for them to have that outside support system. Good play! I'd like to see this performed one day.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKaren Truesdell Riehl
    Release dateMay 10, 2014
    ISBN9781310286940
    Bad Girl: A Play
    Author

    Karen Truesdell Riehl

    Karen Truesdell Riehl's writing achievements are remarkable, given the award-winning author's lifelong battle with dyslexia. She was unable to read until the age of ten. Her published works now include a 2015 San Diego Book Awards winner, Helga: Growing Up in Hitler's Germany. Her other books include a memoir, Love and Madness: My Private Years with George C. Scott, telling of her 30-year hidden liaison with the international film star, six novels, eight plays and a radio comedy series, The Quibbles, available from ArtAge Publications at http://www.seniortheatre.com/product/the-quibbles-radio-shows/. Her children's play, Alice in Cyberland, was an award winner in the National Southwest Writers Contest. Helga was an elementary school librarian, a 1948 German immigrant, when the author met her in 1977. Asked about her experience during the war, Helga quietly revealed she had been a "Jugend," a member of Hitler's child army.Ten-year-old Helga was forced to join the Hitler Youth weekly meetings. Lies and treats were used to build her allegiance to the Fuhrer. As the war drew nearer to her home in Berlin, Helga was sent away to a Youth Training Camp. Her slow disillusionment and harrowing escape home, is a coming-of-age story of a young girl's survival of Nazi mind control. Helga: Growing Up in Hitler's Germany was a 2015 San Diego Book Awards winner. In the romance novel, Hello Again, a finalist in the 2015 San Diego Book Awards, Shannon Taggert falls in love with Nate, a graduate student teaching assistant. But there's another woman in Nate's life, Tally, the daughter of Walter, his mentor and benefactor. Before meeting Shannon, as Walter lay dying, Nate promised to marry his daughter. The Ghosts of Fort Ord was inspired by the author's month-long stay near the remains of the abandoned military base. After having lived for several years in Terre Haute, Indiana, the author was inspired to write a story about scandals in a fictional small town, Freedom's Sins. Saturday Night Dance Club, was inspired by a true story of four couples, from the 1900's to 1930's, touched by the Great War, organized crime, the Depression and the threat of another war, finding sanctuary in their weekly dance club. Drawing from her personal experience, Karen wrote Bad Girl: A Play. The Safe Haven Home for Unwed Mothers provides shelter from a judgmental society, but reveals its hypocrisy as well. The young women from all l...

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