Latest Sequel to 'The Cheerleader' Just Published

SANDWICH — Ever since Ruth Doan MacDougall’s best seller "The Cheerleader" was first published in 1973, readers have wanted to know "What happened next?" to its heroine, Henrietta Snow, and the other characters.

Over the years, MacDougall has answered this question with three sequels, and now a fourth has just been published, "A Born Maniac, or Puddles’s Progress."

MacDougall will be signing copies of this book at the Bayswater Book Company in Senters Marketplace in Center Harbor on Saturday, December 10, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

In "A Born Maniac, or Puddles’s Progress," MacDougall turns her attention to the third member of the group of best friends and tells the story from the point of view of Jean Pond, known as Puddles, who was born in Maine but spent most of her life in New Hampshire and South Carolina. Puddles is now widowed and working at two jobs in South Carolina, as a nurse and a cheerleading coach. Her settled life is suddenly shaken by the death of her mother. Concern about her father galvanizes her, and their trip to New Hampshire and Maine to visit friends and relatives becomes her progress to adventure, an island, a castle, hard decisions, and rebirth.

"Ann V. Norton, English professor at Saint Anselm College, who has written the forewords for "The Cheerleader" and its sequels, says that Puddles is "just as hilarious as when she chased Snowy around a 1950s Woolworth’s with giant underwear."

About that subtitle? MacDougall explains, "The previous sequel, told from the point of view of Bev, the second best friend, was called '‘The Husband Bench, or Bev’s Book' so Puddles demanded a subtitle too."

A Laconia native, MacDougall has lived in Center Sandwich for 35 years with her husband, Don. She is the author of more than a dozen novels and also updates her father’s hiking books, "50 Hikes in the White Mountains" and "50 More Hikes in New Hampshire" on www.ruthdoanmacdougall.com, she writes about life in New Hampshire. She is the recipient of the New Hampshire Writers’ Project’s Lifetime Achievement Award.