MISSING FROM HOME

When their father takes off with a young French girl, Carrie, fourteen, and her twelve-year-old brother Maxwell run away from home in hopes that worrying about them will bring their parents together. It does, but meanwhile some young hippies get in on the act, holding the kids for ransom while pretending to help them hide. Clewes sets this in Provence where the English-artist father and mystery-writer mother have recently, impulsively, settled their family into a centuries-old structure; and the children's unaccustomed surroundings are the most distinctive part of this family adventure--which begins with an unoriginal ploy, gives way soon to hokey melodrama, and makes unattractive stereotypes of all the adults and extras.