A new deluxe edition of the international bestseller by Heather
O'Neill, the Giller-shortlisted author of Daydreams of Angels and The
Girl Who Was Saturday Night, featuring an original foreword from the
author, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the coming-of-age story
that People describes as "a vivid portrait of life on skid row."
Baby, all of thirteen years old, is lost in the gangly, coltish moment
between childhood and the strange pulls and temptations of the adult
world. Her mother is dead; her father Jules is always on the lookout for
his next score. Baby knows that "chocolate milk" is Jules' slang for
heroin and sees a lot more of that in her house than the real article.
But she takes vivid delight in the scrappy bits of happiness and beauty
that find their way to her, and moves through the threat of the streets
as if she's been choreographed in a dance.
Soon, though, a hazard emerges that is bigger than even her hard-won
survival skills can handle. Alphonse, the local pimp, has his eye on her
for his new girl; he wants her body and soul--and what the johns don't
take he covets for himself. At the same time, a tender and naively
passionate friendship unfolds with a boy from her class at school, who
has no notion of the dark claims on her--which even her father, lost on
the nod, cannot totally ignore. Jules consigns her to a stint in juvie
hall, and for the moment this perceived betrayal preserves Baby from
terrible harm--but after that, her salvation has to be her own
invention.
Channeling the artlessly affecting voice of her thirteen-year-old
heroine with extraordinary accuracy and power, Heather O'Neill's
heartbreaking and wholly original debut novel blew readers away when it
was first published ten years ago. Now in a new deluxe package it is
sure to capture its next decade of readers as Baby picks her pathway
along the edge of the abyss to arrive at a place of redemption, and of
love.
