It's 1971, and seventeen-year-old Chloe and her best friend MJ head to San Francisco to ring in the New Year. But Chloe has an ulterior motive―and a secret. She's pregnant and has devised a plan not to be. In San Francisco's flower-power heyday, it was (just about) legal to end her pregnancy. But as soon as the girls cross the Golden Gate, the scheme starts to unravel amid the bellbottoms, love-beads, and bongs. Chloe's secrets escalate until she betrays everyone she cares about. MJ, who has grave doubts about Chloe's plan. Her groovy aunt Kiki, who's offered the girls a place to crash. Her self-absorbed mother meditating back in Phoenix. And maybe, especially, the boy she wishes she'd waited for. In Susan Carlton's Love and Haight , Chloe discovers that easy love is anything but easy. New Year’s Eve in San Francisco with your best friend and your cool aunt—what could be better? For 17-year-old Chloe, it could be better if she weren’t pregnant and planning a secret abortion. The year is 1971 and abortions are legal only in California and New York, so Chloe must navigate the onerous exams, parental permissions (without said parents), and psychological tests required to convince the hospital board to allow her procedure to move forward. In a blatant yet timely history lesson for young women, Carlton transports readers to a decade when abortion was becoming a more open, if still only occasionally legal, possibility, as opposed to the backroom horrors or unhappy weddings that were too often the norm. Carlton gets the ’70s drug-and-free-love culture exactly right, but she respects women enough to constantly return to the difficulty inherent in making this painful, life-changing decision, regardless of time or circumstance. A cautionary tale on many levels, this is an important book that teens will want to discuss. Grades 8-12. --Frances Bradburn “Carlton offers readers detailed insight into the process of getting an abortion pre Roe v. Wade.” ― School Library Journal “…honest in presenting Chloe's medical care, the culture of the time, and conflicting views on this controversial topic.” ― VOYA “A well-framed historical, with a wholly realized setting and believable, rich, likable characters.” ― Kirkus “Readers will revel in Charlotte's sharp, funny company.” ― The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, starred review on Lobsterland Susan Carlton was born in San Francisco, although (regrettably) she did not come of age in the hippie era. The author of the teen novel Lobsterland and a writer for magazines including Self , Elle , and Mademoiselle , she currently lives in Massachusetts with her husband. Her college-aged daughters know all the lyrics to "Baba O'Riley."