Everything you need to understand or teach Acts of Love by Maureen Daly.
Acts of Love is the story of a young girl's coming-of-age and falling in love.
It is also a novel of family life, of an unusually warm and close-knit family and the ways they adapt to changes they are forced to make. Henrietta Caldwell, called Retta, is sixteen and a junior in high school when two events occur that alter her life. One is getting to know Dallas Dobson, a quiet, sensitive youth two years her senior and her social antithesis. Retta's family is cultured, traditional and, although no longer rich, still possessed of high social status as the Caldwells. Dallas wears well-worn clothes, mucks stables to help support himself, and is saddled with a father who drinks to excess.
There is between them an instant attraction that startles Retta with its intensity.
The second important event that occurs relates to the State Highway Commission's decision to confiscate...