The Criminal Life of Effie O. — Sam Savage

Set in the conflicted eighties, the novel recounts the intertwined journeys of self discovery of preteen Effie O'Reilly and her lonely, loving mother Janet. A single mom and former flower-child, Janet has fought her way up from the precarious countercultural seventies to an executive career and a house in an upscale subdivision bland enough to shield her child from any whiff of that risky past. But subversive, artistic Effie wants something more. And one day she rebels, throwing her school into hilarious chaos, and runs away to the city and to a life on the edge. The tumult, the street people, the teeming eventfulness of inner-city life all call to her with news of something "other." What that "other" is and how Effie and Janet each in her own way finds it, is the real story told by this unusual novel. And it is told at breakneck speed in an energetic rhyming verse that veers easily from Shel Silverstein-like jingles to melancholic passages of great poetic beauty. Illustrated with numerous line drawings.