Mary Stolz is quite at the top of those writing for and about today's teen-agers. She gives them to us with all their faults and perplexities, as real as the next-door neighbors. She never provides a conventional happy ending for she knows that the best endings (or beginnings) come when her characters change what they can and accept what they must—when, in short, they grow up.

The setting [of "Rosemary"] is a college community where high school graduates split into two groups, those who do not go on to college and those who do…. Into a former group comes Sam Lyons, college senior…. It is Sam who sets in motion conversations and events which give each of [the] young people a change of perspective.

The matter is serious but the touch is deft and light. "Rosemary" is an outstanding junior novel. (p. 10)

Margaret C. Scoggin, in New...