Permanent Connections is, like all of Bridgers's novels, a hopeful book with warm messages about the value of unconditional love and the strength to be found in human relationships. It is the story of the redemption of the main character from a life of slipping down and failure to a sense of wholeness and purpose. Because it is a realistic book, as well as a hopeful book, the characters do a number of things which many young people do but which their parents do not approve of. Leanna and Travis, who have gone together for years, are sexually active in a responsible way. Bridgers conveys this indirectly within the framework of Leanna's uneasy relationship with her mother and her own wistful feeling that in loving Travis she has mortgaged her own future—that she has made her choices too early. But certainly Travis and Leanna...