Nowhere Girl

August 15, 2011
Paquette’s (The Tiptoe Guide to Tracking Fairies) middle-grade debut has a terrifying premise: after her mother’s death, 13-year-old narrator Luchi Ann, who knows nothing of her American heritage and has spent her entire life in a Thai women’s prison with her mother, must find her place in the outside world. “American but not American, Thai but not really Thai. Where do I belong, with my pale skin, my corn-silk hair, my stone-gray eyes? How can I call any country my own?” Armed with a few clues and a letter from her grandmother, Luchi sets off on an adventure that takes her to Bangkok and then on a boat as a stowaway to find her American family. The tautly paced narrative places Luchi in high-stakes situations as she makes discoveries about her family history, as well as herself. Paquette balances the story’s cruelties with kindnesses, such as that of a ship captain who safeguards her passage. The highly atmospheric setting and thoughtful, determined narrator create
a memorable thriller about identity and belonging. Ages 9–12.

August 1, 2011

Opening with a flash-forward teaser, this unpersuasive debut quickly fizzles.

The only home Luchi Ann, 13, has known is the women's prison in northern Thailand where she was born to a jailed American mother who supervised her impressive education (history, philosophy, art, calculus and languages). After her mother dies, blonde Luchi Ann sets off alone, with the kindly warden's blessing, to "search for answers" to the mystery of her mother's incarceration. (Why she doesn't just ask the warden is another mystery.) Carrying her mother's ashes, money and a few phone numbers but little else, she accepts a ride to Bangkok with the warden's nephew. Like the plot, Luchi Ann never achieves credibility. Puzzlingly, she neither confides in nor seeks help from sympathetic adults in Thailand. They, for their part, neither question her nor intervene to protect her. Luchi Ann's sensibility and breathless present-tense narration, with pauses to rhapsodize about her future, belong more to an entitled girl of privilege than an orphan child adrift in an alien world. Reduced to generic, travel-brochure descriptions of countryside and city, vibrant Thailand feels drably insubstantial, the literary equivalent of an exotic background for a fashion-magazine spread. Equally generic are the Thai characters, enablers on Luchi Ann's self-absorbed journey.

A culturally tone deaf exercise in narcissism. (Fiction. 10-14)

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

September 1, 2011

Gr 7-9-Luchi Ann Finn, 13, was born and raised in a Thai women's prison where her American mother was serving time for drug possession/trafficking. The protective woman never shared the truth of her past with her daughter. When she dies, Luchi is "set free" by the kindly Chief Warden to find her way "home." She is given a ride to Bangkok carrying only the urn with her mother's ashes, a letter from her unknown grandmother (written years earlier to her mother), a storage key, a list of Bangkok addresses, and a pouch of American dollars. Naive and intimidated by the bustling city, Luchi finds no remnants of her mother's past and her money is stolen, so she decides to stow away to America on a cargo ship. Good fortune then begins to come her way. The captain's anger becomes affection as he helps Luchi through immigration; she meets her welcoming grandmother; and her mother's domineering father-in-law begs her forgiveness. The teen's taut narration captures the strangeness of her circumstances, her conflicting familiarity and insecurity with Thai culture, and her emerging sense of self and independence. The protagonist is an appealing heroine caught in a hazy web of family secrets, but determined to fulfill her mother's last words, "Go home." Luchi's courage and resilience enable her to pick up the pieces of her parents' shattered lives and reconcile with her estranged grandparents. This remarkable story contains elements of authenticity but lacks credibility and clear factual information on several issues. For middle grade readers, the absence of family contact, drug-trafficking laws and imprisonment in a foreign country, and Luchi's harrowing escape from child traffickers need more explanation.-Gerry Larson, Durham School of the Arts, NC

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2011
Grades 5-9 Born and raised in a Thai prison with her incarcerated American mother, Luchi Ann, 13, has always known that Mama hid terrifying secrets. When Mama dies without revealing her past, Luchi Ann is suddenly released and takes off in search of her grandmother in the U.S. to find out more about her family and herself. Is her father the evil person Mama had been hiding from? The classic quest story gets expanded here with contemporary details in spare lyrical prose that intensify the perilous, archetypal journey. In prison, Luchi Ann had some computer access and watched TV, but being suddenly alone on the outside is like being born again as she discovers the joy of rain, sky, mountains, trees, crowds, and privacy. She makes it to Bangkok; then, as a stowaway on a ship to California. The plot lurches at times with patched-on surprises, but the realistic specifics, including of-the-moment technology, make the story of betrayal and kindness immediate and universal.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)