Little Girl Gone

November 14, 2011
Madora’s father’s suicide when she was 17 sends her on a path of drugs and partying, and into the controlling arms of Willis Brock, with whom she lives in rural seclusion until he brings home Linda, a pregnant, frightened teen he claimed to have seen begging on the street. Willis locks up Linda under the auspices of getting her clean, but after she gives birth, he sells her baby and keeps her imprisoned. The gullible Madora believes Willis’s reasons for keeping Linda and becomes friendly with a 12-year-old orphan named Django Jones, whose repeated unannounced visits threaten to unravel Willis’s secret. But it’s actually Django’s worldliness that inspires Madora to finally stand up to Willis. Campbell’s newest (after The Good Sister) explores themes of imprisonment—literal, emotional, and psychological. Madora is timid and easily manipulated, but readers will still sympathize, despite the contrived nature of her friendship with Django. Though Willis never seems quite as menacing as he’s supposed to, this works to the book’s advantage; if he were any scarier it would feel exploitative. Strong and touching, but little to hold onto. Agent: The Angela Rinaldi Literary Agency.

December 1, 2011
When your luck runs out, who can help you pick up the pieces? Can you really trust that person? In Campbell's latest novel (The Good Sister, 2010, etc.), Madora grows up in a small Arizona town on the edges of the desert where her father shot himself years before. Madora's mother retreats into her own grief, leaving Madora feeling orphaned. So she finds friends to replace her parents and drugs to numb her pain. One night after a bad experience with drugs out in the desert, Madora's partying friends also abandon her. Shaken and nearly dead, she looks up to see an angel. No, not an angel, but Willis, who scoops her up out of her life and drops her into his life. And that's when her luck really runs out. Willis offers Madora the security she craves with his experience as a Marine medic, his confident manner, his secure job as a home health-care provider and his ambition to become a doctor. Happy in their isolated home out in Evers Canyon, Madora rescues and nurtures small animals. The serenity is shattered, though, when Willis brings home Linda, a pregnant young woman, and locks her in the trailer out back. Claiming that Linda needs someone to take care of her, Willis convinces Madora that only he can help Linda, only he can keep her safe. Doubts begin to creep into Madora's mind, yet she continues to try to trust Willis, to please Willis, to love Willis. The arrival of young, recently orphaned Django one afternoon brings a friend into her life. Django helps Madora realize that she can no longer trust Willis, and she can no longer wait to be rescued. She has to act. The novel sensitively portrays Madora's misplaced love and her awakening to the truth about Willis. Yet the denouement is rushed, leaving the reader wondering how discovering the truth led to finding justice.

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December 1, 2011
At 17, Madora Welles left home for the protective arms of Willis Brock. Five years later, she is totally subservient to Brock, a sociopathic ex-army medic with grandiose plans, who steals from his older home-health-care patients and takes in Linda, a pregnant 16-year-old, making Madora care for the girl as he holds her captive, then delivers and sells her baby. Madora's life changes when it intersects with that of newly orphaned 12-year-old Django Jones, son of a famous rock guitarist, who's sent to live with his mother's older sister after his parents die in a car crash. These characters' lives are riddled with lossthe suicide of Madora's father when she was 12, the theft of Linda's newborn son, the gaping chasm for Django, who for years expects each ring of the phone to be a call from his mother. But they experience renewal and redemption, as justice is served, life goes on, and peace is made. Campbell (The Good Sister, 2010) has another good bet for book groups here; a reading group guide is appended.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)