Becoming Sarah — Claire Bocardo

Though she has a perfectly good real name, Sarah Jane MacAuley has been called “Sissy” since she was five years old. Mama died when she was in high school, Sissy stayed home to raise the younger kids, and Daddy ran off every boy who ever paid any attention to her. Now all the good men in her tiny Texas town have married or left, and Daddy's getting harder to live with every day of the hot summer of 1975. When her best friend asks, “When does it get to be your turn,” Sissy is shocked: it has never occurred to her that she had one coming. The bank offers her old job back, and her close friends advise her to take it. Then rodeo cowboy Michael Wayne Lee comes to town and starts courting her. At the bank and to Michael Wayne, she's Sarah, and she likes it. Daddy's having a falling-down fit, but “Sissy” doesn't fit any more. Still, if she's not Sissy, who is she? She can only find out by Becoming Sarah.