From Publishers Weekly
When their mother leaves to spend the summer in Europe with her new husband, Cab and her brother Bill are sent to live with their grandmother in a run-down Pittsburgh neighborhood called Washco. Cab's job is to help her grandmother run the family diner, which doubles as the area's unofficial meeting hall. Crime is Washco's biggest problem until, galvanized by an ugly rape, its citizens turn to grassroots political activism. Because Davis's ( Good-bye and Keep Cold ) novel deals with a number of issues--Cab's anxieties about the future, her flourishing self-esteem, the changes taking place in Washco--there are moments when the plot seems unwieldy, even melodramatic. But this is more than compensated for by the array of generous, vividly depicted characters. Washco--though it exists only in the imaginations of the author and her readers--is very nearly palpable. Ages 11-up.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From School Library Journal
Grade 6-10-- "Life is change," Cab's mother says simply. But 12 years in one small Texas town are scant preparation for the changes she finds so suddenly thrust upon her. Her mother's remarriage is Cab's first inkling of the surprises life can hold. Then comes the sudden trip north for a summer in Washco, the Pittsburgh neighborhood in which her mother grew up, with a grandmother she's never met. By way of comfort, Cab's brother Bill offers her the moon--"We all look up and see the same moon"--and it becomes the girl's constant. Washco, too, has seen its share of change. The once-vibrant working-class community is now a near slum of vacant stores, street people, and street corner gangs, an aging community with an aging population. Helping out at her grandmother's restaurant, Cab soon comes to know "the regulars," a rich melting pot of characters who are the people and potential of Washco. As they are introduced, so, too, is the violence that skirts their lives, first through offstage events and precautions taken, then in the mugging of an elderly neighbor, and finally in the rape of Bill's beautiful, confident girlfriend. It is her assault that galvanizes the people to action. Artfully developed and seamlessly constructed, the plot advances effortlessly through dialogue and prose that are strong and confident and continuously engaging. As Cab's grandmother refuses to shy away from the discussion of Jessica's rape, Davis refuses to shy away from painful truths, and, in so doing, celebrates the power of the human spirit to confront them and triumph. This is the best kind of "problem novel"--hopeful, uplifting, responsible--and a joy to read. --Marcia Hupp, Mamaroneck Public Library, NY
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
