LETTING GO OF BOBBY JAMES

Texan Jody, 16, has only been married to Bobby James for 13 weeks when he punches her out and leaves her at a gas station in Florida in 1991. Readers learn this when Jody begins a missive to a supermarket owner, to set him straight on the subject of coleslaw. Jody has gumption, though, and enough smarts to know a few things. She gets a job as dishwasher at Thelma’s café and sleeps in the local movie theatre until she can get a place. She makes the acquaintance of Dooley, a mentally disabled boy, and, later, the pregnant and sullen Effaline. It’s Effaline who brings out the urge to make things right in Jody. She finds the local library, writes her mama, and moves into the same seedy apartment complex where Effaline lives. It’s Jody and Dooley who deliver Effaline’s baby (aptly named Cine) in that movie theatre during a hurricane, and it’s Cine’s birth they are celebrating when Bobby James turns up just like a bad penny. This is all presented in Jody’s unvarnished and very funny voice. A fast read where problems can actually be solved by facing them head-on, thinking stuff through, and working hard. (Fiction. YA)