This Stranger, My Father. This item is unavailable.This Stranger, My Father

Patty Meely's world is turned upside-down when her father is arrested for espionage he had committed twenty years beforehand.

Grade 7-10 After school one day, high- school freshman Patricia Meely finds her fathera middle-class steel mill worker who loves bowlingsurround ed by threatening-looking men in gray suits. These are FBI agents and U.S. Marshalls who apprehend Patty's fa ther, charging that he is a convicted spy who escaped from a federal penitentia ry nearly 20 years before and has been living under an assumed name. With her father arrested, and her own identity in question, Patty's world is turned inside-out, and she finds herself first in a depressing and restrictive foster home, then on the run with her own, now unfamiliar, father. This is a well- written, fast-paced, and involving sto ry, and readers should be drawn into Patty's moral dilemma and awkward new relationship with her father. Seem ingly surrounded by greedy U.S. Mar shalls, corrupt federal agents, and friends who are unwilling to stick their necks out on her behalf, Patty is cut adrift on the wrong side of the law with no friends, no family, no way back to innocence, and $88,000 of her father's dirty money. She demonstrates that she also can be daring, resourceful, and cunning, and in the end her moral di lemma remains unresolved, leaving readers wondering if this girl is a poor victim of circumstance or truly her fa ther's daughter. A few implausible de tailsthe ease with which Patty ob tains a driver's license and later learns instantly to ride a motorcycleand some confusing final scenes mar the ve racity of the story, but do not dull the excitement. Deborah Locke, West brook Library, Me.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.