ZIGZAG

A rural teen finds inner strength in this satisfying journey through America. Robin’s boyfriend is spending his summer before college in Rome. Crushed, Robin opts out of her summer job at the Tastee-Freez, instead joining her aunt and bratty cousins on a road trip around the American West. The cousins, extremely troubled since the recent death of their father—Marshall has been expelled from school for his violent drawings, and Iris is bulimic—may be more than Robin can handle. Yet during the journey, seeing sites both kitschy and glorious, the travelers grow into a closure that is almost too harmonious. Disappointingly conventional fare from the author of Hard Love; still, touched with Wittlinger’s trademark class-consciousness, well-written, and emotionally powerful. (Fiction. 14-17)