Hallie doesn't like school. She loves to gamble, which includes playing the horses, poker or anything on which she can wager. Her parents have a child almost every year. She is the second oldest. What Hallie would love to do is buy a car and go to Las Vegas. Her parents can't afford to give her one, so she saves her money. She almost has saved enough for her car when she decides if she bets on a horse she is sure will win she can get the car sooner. Of course the horse loses by a nose and she already borrowed money from a friend with promises to pay back the next day. Hallie also plays poker with a group that includes a priest and a policeman. Her brother tells her of a job opening that is on the bulletin board of the grocery store where he works. She applies for the part-time job, that turns out to be a gardener for people who are a bit different than most she encounters. The elderly woman of the house writes poems for a pornographic magazine and the woman's son is an antique dealer and gourmet cook. Surprisingly, Hallie is hired. She then runs away from home, but not too far. She takes up residence in her employer's greenhouse. She is home schooled by her employers and turns out all right, finally getting money for her car, graduates high school and then can decide whether it's Las Vegas she wants or more education.
I have a hard time believing a high school junior can intermingle making bets at race tracks and betting parlors with no one caring, especially when the local cop and the priest who has baptized her as an infant are part of her poker buddies. Evidently no one is concerned that she is a high school junior. She seems to flit from racetrack to backroom poker games to bars with no one caring that she is underage. This says very little for those who are supposed to protect a juvenile and help them keep on the straight and narrow. To put it kindly, this is not my type of a book, but it may be yours. It is touted as funnier than Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe but it wasn't to me.
Jaye Dee Tyrack, reviewer, Gotta Write Network
March 3, 2006
copyright JDT and GWN
