I wake up with the sun shining through the cracks in the dusty, crooked blinds. Down the hall, other girls are using the showers and toilets. I need to go, but I closemy eyes and hold it in. I usually wait until everyone’s been gone a while before I go to the bathroom, because fat Karen always leaves the place smelling like a sewerage treatment plant. Considering how much she eats, she probably drops a huge elephant turd every morning. Wouldn’t that be the definition of a home, a place where you don’t mind the smell of the other people who’ve gone to the toilet before you?
Len, a young teenager, is in a children’s refuge house. She was found in a wrecked car in a gully after what appears to be more than a car accident. Len’s not even her real name, but a name that was on the jumper she was wearing when found. Her body is healing, but her brain has shut down some of the memories of before. She’s prickly and inward looking. She has little tolerance for those around her, and cleans obsessively. She’s resistant to the efforts of the live-in counsellor and even more reluctant to go to school, though she’s clearly bright. She’s a loner. Gradually, memories return, although she doesn’t tell her counsellor. This is her story and she trusts no one else with it. Not until she’s remembered the worst thing, the memory of how she came to be in that car. And that reminds her that she may still be in danger.
<a href=”http://www.fishpond.com.au/product_info.php?ref=271&id=9781921665707&affiliate_banner_id=1″ target=”_blank”>Riggs Crossing</a>is the story of one girl’s road to recovery after severe trauma. It’s set in contemporary Sydney and also in the interior world of a young teenager. A teenager whose childhood memories return in unexpected flashes that don’t always make sense. Meanwhile she shuts out the world around her using all manner of anti-social but protective behaviours. Heeter shows the reader that everyone has a story and it’s impossible to engage with anyone without some sense of where they’ve come from. Len’s thirst for knowledge, both of her own history and of the world around her is clear, even when often camouflaged by her prickliness with her housemates and those who would care for her. Recommended for secondary readers.
<a href=”http://www.fishpond.com.au/product_info.php?ref=271&id=9781921665707&affiliate_banner_id=1″ target=”_blank”><img src=”http://www.fishpond.com.au/affiliate_show_banner.php?ref=271&affiliate_pbanner_id=46298771″ border=”0″ alt=”Riggs Crossing”></a>
R<a href=”http://www.fishpond.com.au/product_info.php?ref=271&id=9781921665707&affiliate_banner_id=1″ target=”_blank”>Riggs Crossing</a> Michelle Renee Heeter
Ford St Publishing 2012 ISBN: 9781921665707
review by Claire Saxby, Children’s Author
www.clairesaxby.com
Available from good bookstores or <a href=”http://www.fishpond.com.au/product_info.php?ref=271&id=9781921665707&affiliate_banner_id=1″ target=”_blank”>online</a>.