Books with title Elvis - That's the Way It Is

It’s the 1960s – the time for equal rights, peace, and love. But for Ellen Manery, it’s the time to work hard and finish high school early. She’d rather be helping out at the university’s medical lab than listening to rock and roll and hanging out with the kids at her high school. Isolated and driven, Ellen feels like she was born an outsider. And what if you live in a small town, where change is slow in coming? Tony Paul knows what it’s like to be on the outside. Living on an Indian reserve near a small town, he goes to the local high school, but his heritage and the color of his skin stand him apart. Ellen and Tony meet when Ellen’s parents decide to leave city life behind and move to the town. Right away, they are drawn to each other’s difference. Used to being on their own in high school, together they find a happiness and strength that allow them to face the sexism and prejudice around them. But can Ellen and Tony be more than friends? Are they right to think that a girl can study science and become a doctor, and that an Indian boy can go to college? Together they’ll find out.

To Ellen Manery, a brilliant, introverted, socially isolated fifteen-year-old, there is nothing good about the summer of 1967, especially when her parents decide to move to a small town in the interior of British Columbia. All the big ideas of the 1960s—the civil rights movement, the sexual revolution, women's rights—have not had much of an effect on this small community. Ellen has always been more interested in studying than a social life, but that begins to change when she meets Tony Paul, an eighteen-year-old who belongs to the Shuswap Indians and lives on the nearby reserve. When school starts it is Tony's friendship that gives Ellen the strength to endure the loneliness, racism, discrimination, and antifeminism she must face during her last year in high school. As Tony and Ellen's friendship turns into something deeper, they must decide if they can break free of society's rules and forge their own future.