Patterson, Janci. Chasing the Skip.

Patterson, Janci.  Chasing the Skip.  Macmillan/ Henry Holt  228p  $16.99 978-0-8050-9391-9     2012  ms/hs   E-BN      Conflict   

Erica’s life has never been easy, and she questions her value in life.  Her mother often disappears for a day or a week, leaving Erica with a grandmother.  Even though Erica has had no relationship with her bounty-hunter father, Grandma dumps Erica on him when Erica’s teenage behavior becomes too much and mom has still not returned.  Thus starts a road trip where Erica gets to know her father as they travel the country picking up “skips” – people who have skipped bail.  Traveling in a truck pulling a small trailer for sleeping, father and daughter easily get on each other’s last nerve.  To give the father credit, he values education and has Erica enrolled in home-schooling courses.  In order to protect his daughter, he only accepts easy skips that should not prove violent - that is, until he takes on a teenage skip charged with car theft who manages to get Erica to fall for him.  Erica must decipher the truth from lies related to relationships with her father and mother and her new feelings for the teenage skip.  This novel will cause readers to examine their own lives, especially if their family life has been less than smooth.  Erica evolves into a more confident young woman who realizes that there are many angles to the words someone speaks, and that truth is sometimes fuzzy.

Bounty Hunters-Fiction                                     --Lois McNicol