From Publishers Weekly
Caro, 13, and her sweet-natured, utterly naive mother have spent Caro's entire life drifting from one alternative community to the next. After financial fraud destroys their latest residence, Guru Ganjaji's Paradise Village, Caro and her mother set up camp under the on-ramp of a San Francisco highway, along with a rather coyly eccentric group of homeless men and women. With the advent of cold weather, the street people move into a deserted house in Berkeley and Caro returns to school, where, in one of the many far-fetched developments that characterize this story, she resumes her friendship with wealthy Teri, a pal from the ashram. Neither the coincidences nor the heroine's misfortunes end here: on her own after the Berkeley squat is razed, Caro is nearly raped (but is rescued in the nick of time), then almost becomes a prostitute (but is saved at the 11th hour by Teri and a surly but good-hearted homeless friend). Caro's first-person narrative remains inexplicably perky and glib right up to the sunny ending. Nasaw's ( Easy Walking ) peculiarly upbeat treatment tends to trivialize very serious issues. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Gr. 7-12. Caro's mother is a caring parent who is a sucker for offbeat religious groups that tend to leave her poorer and not much wiser. Now that the latest guru has run off with the community assets, Caro and Momma have no place to live. As street people, they find life a daily struggle to stay warm and dry, get something to eat, avoid predators and authority figures. With humor, insight, and compassion, but without sentiment, 14-year-old Caro, the narrator, describes the other street people they come to know. Among them are alcoholics, drug addicts, thieves, lunatics, and those who have just run out of luck. They are flawed human beings just like those who live in houses, only more vulnerable. When a friend finds an abandoned house in Berkeley, Caro accepts with gratitude the shelter and the company of the other street people who move in. She attends school and makes friends, but then the squatters are forced out with tear gas, and Caro almost becomes a prostitute just to live. This book offers a fascinating look at the culture of the homeless, an engrossing and believable story line, and a memorable heroine.
Sheilamae O'Hara
