Runaway (review)

It's been two years since the death of Holly's heroin-addict mother, and twelve-year-old Holly has yet to find stability, instead experiencing a series of abusive foster homes from which she has fled only to be apprehended and returned. This time she manages an effective getaway and heads west to California, traveling as a stowaway on a train, in a bus luggage compartment, and the back of a truck. Along the way she chronicles her experiences and thoughts in a journal given to her by Miss Leone, her last teacher, whom Holly didn't even like but now finds hard to forget; journaling makes her consider her troubled past and the challenges she faces as a homeless kid, struggling with even more deprivation and danger than homeless adults. Van Draanen has a heavy hand in her setup, with elaborate tragedies piling up on Holly to a magnitude that Dickens himself would have eschewed; the result paradoxically undercuts the depredations of homelessness itself, and the sudden happy ending seems more a literary necessity than a plausible conclusion to Holly's journey. More successful is the gritty survival story of Holly's subsistence: as with Holman's classic urban saga Slake's Limbo (BCCB 4/75), there's a certain fascination in the logistics of survival and flying under the radar amid civilization. The book also starkly depicts the difficulties of homelessness in general and the powerlessness of young people who've run out of options. The drama may add spice for kids who might not stay for the social point, and the book will certainly disabuse readers of any illusions about the picaresque freedoms of running away.