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A CEILING OF STARS by Ann Howard Creel

A CEILING OF STARS

by Ann Howard Creel

Pub Date: Sept. 1st, 1999
ISBN: 1-56247-848-6

There’s not much to recommend in this stilted and mawkish tale of homelessness and redemption. As her mother disappears into drunkenness, Vivien, 12, named by her father for the Lady of the Lake, clings to the Arthurian tales he told her before he died. Vivien makes friends among the homeless in Denver, and even finds a place to stay in Arch House, where runaway teens can be safe, but she finds the lure of the streets irresistible. The book is told in journal entries and through letters Vivien writes to relatives whose addresses she doesn’t have. Creel romanticizes homelessness, inhabits her novel with simplistic good guys and bad guys—even a puppy. The result is neither persuasive nor satisfying. (Fiction. 9-12)