Riding in Cars with Boys

August 1, 1990
A self-described wild girl travels through the ``demolition derby'' of her 1960s lifestyle in this rough-hewn account. Born into a working-class Italian-American family in Wallingford, Conn., Donofrio rebelled early, defying her policeman father especially. Consorting with lowlifes, indulging in drugs, promiscuous and aimless, she became pregnant and entered an ill-starred, short-lived marriage. Later, a mother, she studied at Wesleyan University, where she soaked up another kind of culture and another type of liberation. In this humor-flecked, street-side view of her unconventional life, Donofrio, a New York City freelance journalist, writes about a mother and her son coming of age together.