Read Stephen Davenport’s Hilarious New Memoir
Grab your life preservers, sailors! Ensign Davenport is on the bridge!
In 1953, shortly after the end of the Korean War, while the draft was still on, Stephen Davenport became a ninety-Day Wonder, the derisive term for junior officers in the Naval Reserve after only ninety days of training. All on dry land!
Often funny, sometimes scary, as when Davenport almost caused a collision at sea, Ninety-Day Wonder is a riveting account of lessons learned aboard ship by an inexperienced officer among far more experienced sailors.
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Ninety-Day Wonder:
How The Navy Would Have Been Better Off Without Me
Hilarious New Memoir by Stephen Davenport
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Miss Oliver’s School for Girls Trilogy
My first three published novels, SAVING MISS OLIVER’S, NO IVORY TOWER, and THE ENCAMPMENT, are set in Miss Oliver’s School for Girls, a fiercely feminist New England boarding school “founded by a woman, designed by women, headed by a woman, with a curriculum that focuses on the way women learn. Everything in the Saga of Miss Oliver’s School for Girls evolves from my 30-year career in independent schools.
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Reviews
A remarkable novel about what brings meaning to our lives
THE ENCAMPMENT is about two worlds colliding: the pristine world of an upper-crust, private girl’s high school and the world of a recently-returned soldier suffering from PTSD. The question is, will two girls break the rules of the private high school to save a man’s life?
THE ENCAMPMENT tackles the “why” of education in a brilliant way.
Steve Davenport is a consummate educator. As a former teacher, advisor, coach, administrator, parent, and national spokesperson for liberal learning, Davenport knows the WHAT and the HOW of the school world from the inside.
Private Schools Have a Conscience
We don’t think about private school students caring about the homeless. This novel shows that they do, and shows it movingly.
THE ENCAMPMENT tackles the “why” of education in a brilliant way.
Steve Davenport is a consummate educator. As a former teacher, advisor, coach, administrator, parent, and national spokesperson for liberal learning, Davenport knows the WHAT and the HOW of the school world from the inside.
It is no surprise that Saving Miss Oliver’s is informed by a compassionate knowledge of people who inhabit independent schools. After all, the book’s author spent years teaching at and leading this kind of institution, and later was one of the nation’s top school consultants. He knows the territory.
Steve Davenport’s novel Saving Miss Oliver’s is fast-paced, entertaining and singularly evocative of the pressure-cooker atmosphere of a boarding school. Steve knows schools, and he brings us face toface with their passions, their absurdities and their virtues – especially when it comes to schools for girls.
No Ivory Tower
Stephen Davenport has used his “on the ground” experiences to depict characters who can be found in any independent school. From the fiercely loyal to the sneaky backstabbers to the ostrich heads, this second book in the Miss Oliver’s series is filled with recognizable and redeeming characters. I thoroughly enjoyed it and can’t wait to read #3!
No Ivory Tower
The Books
The Encampment: A Novel (Miss Oliver’s School for Girls Book 3)
Trouble approaches on a warm September day when Sylvia Perrine Bickham, the head of school’s daughter, gives money to a homeless man on the street. Through some prying, she and her friends learn he is a veteran of the Iraq War and probably suffering from post-traumatic stress, so they sneak food and clothing to his lean-to at odd hours of the day and agree to tell no one—not the teachers, and especially not Sylvia’s mother, Rachel. But talk of things gone missing from the school is getting louder, and Rachel knows something is up. More importantly, winter is coming and Sylvia worries the man will freeze if he stays outside. Have they done all they can for him? Have they done enough? What is enough.
Vivid, riveting, and utterly engrossing, The Encampment is the third installment of the Miss Oliver’s School for Girls series.
PURCHASE
No Ivory Tower: A Novel (Miss Oliver’s School for Girls Book 2)
Set in the backdrop of a prestigious all-girls boarding school, this provocative novel explores the personal lives of those within the school’s small community and the empowerment, strength, and resolve it must find in the face of a surprise adversary.
After a tumultuous transitional year at the prestigious boarding school, Rachel Bickham now leads as the new head of Miss Oliver’s School for Girls, ready to rush in an era of renewal and success. With beloved teacher Francis Plummer by her side, surely she can conquer anything thrown at her, perhaps even finally start a family of her own. But lately Rachel hears nothing about Francis’s classes, once legend among the students. . . In fact, the praises have been suspiciously absent. In the meantime, financial crisis still looms over the school, and now there are rumors spreading of a big scandal concerning one of the students, Claire Nelson, who is like a daughter to Rachel. To save Claire from expulsion and preserve the school’s reputation, Rachel must come up with a daring plan that may risk everything–her career, marriage, even the special bond with Claire–but it may just save them all.
This is the follow-up to Davenport’s first novel, Saving Miss Oliver’s.
PURCHASE
Saving Miss Oliver’s: A Novel (Miss Oliver’s School for Girls Book 1)
The prestigious boarding school Miss Oliver’s School for Girls is on the cusp of going under. The trustees just fired the headmistress of the last thirty-five years, and the alumnae and students are angry and determined to hate her successor, the new–and male–head Fred Kindler. If only he can gain the support of the legendary senior teacher Francis Plummer, then Fred might have a fighting chance to save the school; but no one except Francis’s wife and the school librarian, Peggy, is willing to give Fred a chance.
With Fred’s career on the line and the Plummers’ marriage at stake, will Miss Oliver’s survive to be the school it once was?