This epistolary novel has queer teens, pen pals, punk and big fuck-you-Anita-Bryant energy ("ANITA! YOU LIAR! WE'LL SET YOUR HAIR ON FIRE" goes a protest chant), which means a lot to love. It's 1977, and the protagonists connect when their Orange County Christian and San Francisco Catholic school students randomly assign them as pen pals. I'm not sure about the likelihood of that intramural/intrasectional collaboration, but I'm not going to quibble with such an enjoyable and impactful teen novel.

Not enough fuck-you-Anita-Bryant content? Here's another one:

"I spilled my orange juice and it got all over me and I had to change my skirt. I iddn't have time to clean up, but it got all over my notebook, too, and--
"OH, MY FUCKING GOD. ORANGE JUICE. I KNEW THIS WAS ALL ANITA FUCKING BRYANT'S FAULT."

The scene is the struggle against Prop 6, which would ban queer teachers (and their allies) from public schools. A San Francisco marcher held a sign that read,

WOULD YOU WANT MICHELANGELO TEACHING YOUR CHILDREN ART?"

bless

An offstage character in the novel is Harvey Milk. The Orange County character, Tammy, writes him letters when she's not writing to Sharon (her SF pen pal). She gets to have Harvey when she needs him, but for the Twinkie-aware reader, the knowledge of his fate casts an important memory shadow over San Francisco's joy.