Relationships between Parents and Children

The relationships between parents and their children are often further complicated by their situations. The characters of this novel face even greater complications. All of these girls have committed crimes, and many of the parents are absent. Some of the adults who forge quasi-parental relationships are either abusive or indifferent. The overall situations create abnormal relationships. The situations are still important to the young girls who are on the verge of adulthood.

Mary Addison has just turned sixteen and has been in jail since she was nine. Mary has recently become pregnant and she now claims that the story she told when she was nine – that she was directly responsible for the death of an infant her mother was babysitting – was not true. A lawyer accepts Mary's new version of events because she believes the relationship between Mary and her mother, Dawn...