Sunday, December 11, 2005

See You Down the Road, by Kim Ablon Whitney

Bridget is a Traveller, a group of modern day nomads who travle in trailers, making a living largely by ripping people off and then moving on before they can get caught. But 16 year old Bridget isn't sure that this life is for her. The stealing is part of her concern but it's also her upcoming marriage to Patrick that makes her question who she is and what she wants to do with her life.

Based on a real subculture, Whitney carves out an amazingly fresh landscape to tell her story. And being such an unusual background, the characters operate in ways we aren't accustomed to. How many teens worry about engagements, bride prices, and stealing to make their parents proud of them? I'll give the book high marks for originality and presenting a compelling set of characters.

But I think my reservations come mostly from personal problems with the story. It's hard to care about Bridget's fretting about getting married when she's defrauding and outright robbing people right and left and lives with such a distorted moral compass that this is OK. When you think of how these people live, this is a very difficult group to feel sympathy for.

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