Iowa is Maribeth Robertson’s home state and the place where her family’s response to her pregnancy first confines her future: her father orders her to leave for a convent, and she departs for Chicago rather than remain there. Later, a plan supported by the Whittakers gives her a route back to Iowa to finish school, making the state both the setting of her estrangement and a possible starting point for education and reconciliation.

Setting and connections

In March, Maribeth lives in Onawa, Iowa, while Tommy Whittaker, another sixteen-year-old, is in Grinnell. Their towns are about 250 miles apart. The novel places these parallel lives side by side: Tommy is grieving within his family home, while Maribeth is facing conflict with her father and the consequences of an unplanned pregnancy.

Iowa is also where Tommy’s younger sister Annie has her school and holiday life. Before Christmas, Annie talks with him about his plans, including asking Emily, a girl newly arrived in Grinnell from Chicago, to a movie. These ordinary details of school, hockey, and a tentative invitation establish the family’s everyday world before grief changes it.

Maribeth’s departure

In Onawa, Maribeth’s father objects to her prom dress and makeup, applying a stricter standard to his daughter than to her older brother, Ryan. The disagreement reflects the gendered limits shaping her life at home. After her pregnancy becomes known, her father tells her she will leave for a convent the next morning and instructs her not to tell her younger sister, Noelle, the truth. Maribeth is told to say she is going away to school.

Maribeth cannot bear to remain at the convent. With her savings and a small bag, she leaves at dawn, walks to the bus station, and buys an open-ended ticket to Chicago, traveling by way of Omaha. She has no home to return to and has not yet arranged where she will stay, but leaving Iowa gives her a sense of independence and possibility. Before boarding, she sends postcards to her mother and Noelle, promising to provide an address once she has one.

Distance and unequal circumstances

When Maribeth later meets Tommy, the fact that they are both sixteen makes their contrasting circumstances especially clear. Tommy still has a family and expects to return to school in the fall; Maribeth has been separated from her family and is expecting a baby whose father has not offered her a shared future. The distance between Iowa and Tommy’s life in Grinnell is therefore not only geographical: it marks the different kinds of support and security available to the two teenagers.

Their connection nonetheless gives Maribeth practical support for continuing her education. After Tommy returns to school, he arranges to copy the curriculum and lend her his books so that she can keep up with assignments while living and working elsewhere. They study together, and her work shows that she is an exceptionally strong student. The plan makes a return to Iowa for school more than a vague hope, even though neither teenager knows exactly what will happen after the birth.

A possible return

The Whittakers later offer Maribeth the money they had set aside for Annie’s education so she can attend college. John tells her that she should return home to Iowa, finish school in the spring, and then choose where to go to college; she may also come back and stay with the Whittakers. He believes her father would like her to return, while acknowledging that their relationship will not immediately be easy.

Maribeth admits that she hates the thought of going home. Tommy, holding her hand, also dislikes her leaving and promises to visit when he can, but both recognize that the separation is not permanent. Iowa consequently remains unresolved at the close of this part of her story: it is associated with the family rupture that drove her away, but also with finishing school and the possibility of making peace before she moves on to college.