Being Fishkill by Ruth Lehrer (review)

Seventh-grader Fishkill figures that a girl with that name can take what she wants from other kids' lunches while taking no static from anyone who tries to bully her. Her lunchtime collection routine introduces her to Duck-Duck, a quirky, lawobsessed girl who immediately inducts Fishkill into her gang (of one). The two become fast friends, and when Duck-Duck's mother learns that Fishkill has been living alone since her abusive grandfather died and her mother went missing, she takes Fishkill into their home. Fishkill's drug-abusing mother reappears and kidnaps Fishkill, but Duck-Duck is also an amateur sleuth, so she rescues her friend. Then another tragedy strikes, and while Fishkill has had a lifetime of experience with abuse and abandonment, she now has to learn what it takes to love someone enough to stick around. The deep sadness undergirding this story is held in check, rhetorically speaking, by Fishkill's matter-of-fact, survivalist perspective and a fast-moving plot, but still, the circumstances that prompt her wariness cannot be denied; this is a kid who has suffered horrific intergenerational abuse. It is even vaguely hinted that her mean-as-a-snake grandfather might also be her father; he abused his daughter in every way possible, at any rate, so that she is utterly broken. Fishkill's resilience is thus remarkable enough so that readers need some semblance of the happy ending plotted for her, however compromised. Fans of Catherine Ryan Hyde's rescue dramas are the audience for this. KC