This story was not quite as emotionally involving as I thought it might be. The story is simple enough, but there are gaps in it. The gaps mainly have to do with the characters. This girl has a rough relationship with her father, though he barely talks to her so we don't really get to know why it's so rough, at least not until nearly the end of the novel. She's married, to a man who doesn't really love her. And, who it seems, she doesn't love much either. (My thought of course, is why get married in the first place, and why that young?)

Irma Voth's character is made to be the catalyst for several negative events: the death of her sister, which leads to the estrangement with her father, the abandonment from her husband, the death of another man in her community after she steals her husbands drugs. It's all just a lot, a little too much even, for an 18 year old to go through.

And the fact that they just happened to find all these people so willing to help a couple of runaways, was a little too good to be true. Or maybe I'm just too cynical.