In a self-interview that appeared in ALAN Review, Daly notes that in 1945, Ladies Home Journal sponsored a Gallup poll to determine "the three favorite books of young Americans." The books chosen were The Bible, Gone with the Wind, and Seventeenth Summer. Her first novel, Seventeenth Summer (1942), is considered to be a breakthrough novel in young adult fiction because it honestly and frankly discusses peer pressures, sensuality, and homosexuality-topics that were taboo in 1940s culture. Although Daly stresses that her novels are written for adults, her empathetic handling of the emotions and confusions of first love has enchanted adults and teens alike, and her novels frequent many young adult reading lists.
Her characterizations are largely based on her experiences as a young adult and on her daughter's teenage years. The first love experience is of prime importance in any life," Maureen Daly stated in an interview with Lisa Ann Richardson for Journal of Reading. " Seventeenth Summer deals with falling in love for the first time. Blood, bigotry and bad touching.(Also published as Maureen Daly McGivern) American novelist, short story writer, author of children's books, editor, essayist, and journalist. “Dream Boy” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Whether wedged, panting, on a cramped bus seat or groping furtively in a tiny pup tent, the two leads effortlessly capture the recklessness of first love and especially its inarticulateness, when sometimes a desperate gasp of “touch me” is the best we can manage. Roeg, who, as the son of Nicolas Roeg and Theresa Russell, has inherited his mother’s sly, predatory sensuality. But his early flirtation scenes are extremely effective, teasing out the tremors of infatuation with considerable help from Mr. Adapting Jim Grimsley’s novel, James Bolton directs his small cast (including Thomas Jay Ryan and Diana Scarwid as Nathan’s parents) through wooden dialogue and the didactic proddings of Richard Buckner’s guitar score. Set amid the lush farmlands of Louisiana which the cinematographer, Sarah Levy, paints with a faintly menacing sheen “Dream Boy” is pretty to look at but dismayingly obvious, as in the shot of a wall-mounted crucifix gazing sorrowfully down on an incestuous struggle. Algebra homework leads to a snuggle in the cemetery, and it’s not long before the natives are compelled to intervene.
The material may be florid, but its execution is sensitive as Nathan (Stephan Bender), the new kid on the school bus, locks eyes with Roy (Max Roeg), the silky-haired driver and farm boy next door. Floating uneasily between ghost story and gay tragedy, “Dream Boy” marvels as young love flowers on a dunghill of homophobia, incest and religious repression.
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