Returnable Girl - Softcover

Lowell, Pamela

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0761455922 ISBN 13: 9780761455929

Publisher: Skyscape, 2012

Synopsis

"A powerful rage came over me and before I knew it, I was throwing things around my room. Everything! All of the things that Alison had given me. . . . But that wasn’t enough, and more than that, it wasn’t working. I realized I needed to do something REALLY BIG this time."

Abandoned. That’s how Ronnie Hartman feels after her mother and Kenny, her mom’s good-for-nothing boyfriend, move to Alaska, bringing Ronnie’s two younger brothers with them and leaving her behind. Now thirteen years old, Ronnie has been "returned" from multiple foster homes because of her impulsive lying and stealing. Her latest foster mom, Alison, is Ronnie’s very last chance—if she doesn’t want to end up in some awful residential treatment center.

Meanwhile, Ronnie wants more than anything to fit in with the popular crowd, especially with the beautiful (but stuck-up) Paige. But when Ronnie betrays her only friend, a chubby outcast named Cat, she begins a pattern of deception that can only end in disaster. As Ronnie struggles to define herself, an important letter will present her with the most heart-wrenching decision of her life: to accept the woman who wants to adopt her, or to return to the mother who once abandoned her.

About this title

About the Author:

Pamela Lowell lives in Barrington, Rhode Island, and is a licensed clinical social worker with more than twenty years of experience. She currently maintains a private practice specializing in work with teenage girls. This is her first novel.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 8 Up–Veronica Hautman is 13 and unsettled. Since her mother left two years ago, she has been in a succession of foster families, including an uncle and a religious but selfish aunt. Now she is living with a new foster mother, a child psychologist who is willing to tackle Ronnie's lying, stealing, and violent outbursts. Through diary entries, the girl relates her conflicted feelings toward, and sporadic long-distance interactions with, her mother; her growing love for and desire to be good for the first authority figure to care for her; and a complex peer environment. By creating a truly believable teenage narrative voice and a fully realized cast of characters, Lowell offers an engrossing, well-plotted, and impressive read. Each character, from Ronnie's depressed and self-destructive neighbor to the motorcycle-riding youth minister, struggles with very human challenges and plays a meaningful role in the girl's growth. Difficult issues–betrayal, depression, emotional abuse–are handled without melodrama or sensationalism. Ultimately, the novel celebrates the resilience of both teens and adults, the bonds formed in healing, and the journeys taken in finding and following one's heart. Readers will feel they have traveled the physical and emotional distance with Ronnie, and will find comfort and hope in the story's resolution.–Riva Pollard, The Winsor School Library, Boston
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About this edition

• Publisher: Skyscape
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0761455922
• ISBN 13: 9780761455929
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240