Betsy and Tacy are sophomores in Deep Valley High School. They are important members of "the Crowd," which in 1907, as today, was the center of all the goings-on in the high school. But all the interest in examinations, dates, parties, school games vanishes when Phil Brandish joins the Crowd, for Phil is new and handsome and has a bright red auto.

Betsy decides that she has to change her personality to fit her new sophisticated role, and a trip to Milwaukee gives her the opportunity. Whether or not she succeeds in this familiar teenage enterprise, things begin to happen after she returns home, and her great decision about herself is made at her First Dance, one of the most exciting events in any girl's life.

The thousands of devoted readers of the Betsy-Tacy stories will find in Besty in Spite of Herself that life continues to go its exuberant way in the Ray household, with its trio of daughters, its understanding parents. Carney, Winona, Tony, Joe, and the rest of "the Crowd" are back in a story as warm and satisfying as Heaven to Betsy. 

From the dust jacket