Rating: 
Summary: Emotionally gripping but missing something...
Review: This story of a young woman's struggle to survive despite her circumstances has some good things going for it. The reader is pretty much instantly hooked into her story, eager to find out how it will end. But at the same time, there's something missing.Ruthie Bolton or "Gal" is a pseudonym for the heroine of this true story, written with the help of a friend who tries her best to stay true to the voice of this unique woman. There are no 25-cent words. There's no attention to sentence structure or grammar, which can be disconcerting at times. But what you get is the raw, honest narrative of someone who has clearly lived through a great deal and come out of it a survivor. Ruthie's childhood world has trouble and pain written all over it. Living in a small town outside of Charleston, S.C., she was raised by her grandmother and step-grandfather. The step-grandfather, Ruthie's only father figure, is an abusive man who keeps her and her cousins in line with violence. Ulimately, that violence takes her grandmother's life. Ruthie grows up in relative poverty, marked out for failure from the start. But she survives her blows and graduates from high school. Fleeing her step-grandfather's home, she tries to make a life for herself and ends up making some poor decisions that change her life often for the worse. Eventually, Ruthie triumphs over the bad hand she is dealt and settles into a happy second marriage with a man whose family accepts her for who she is. Ruthie has a painful struggle accepting that love. This situation was the most gripping for me because you see Ruthie's heart, raw and broken, truly for the first time. If the emotions that are let out in this part of the book were as available to the reader elsewhere, I would have enjoyed "Gal" much more. Instead, I often felt like a I was reading a rambling listing of events and voices at times. Ruthie's feelings are buried. We don't know how these things touched her, what changes they created in her behavior. These moments are what's missing. At the same time, "Gal" will grip any reader willing to take the risk. I would highly recommend this book for teen readers because of the simplicity of the language and the life lessons it has to share. It will certainly spark some interesting discussions between teens and their peers, and their families.
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