Little Girl Gone - Druscilla Campbell

From the back cover -

Medora was seventeen and heading for a load of trouble when Willis rescued her. Fearful of the world and alienated from friends and family, she ran away with him and for five years they lived alone in near isolation. When Willis kidnaps a pregnant teenage girl and imprisons her in a truck trailer behind the house, Madora is torn between her love for him, her fear of the world, and her sense of right and wrong. A pit bull named Foo brings Djano Jones a brilliant but troubled twelve-year-old boy, into Madora's life. As Django struggles to understand his place in the world, he helps Madora discover the personal and moral courage to free herself and the girl from Willis's control, and learn to stand on her own.


My Review

Drusilla Campbell, author also of the Good Sister brings to the reader a heart-wrenching story of troubled teens and tweens and a man who exploits them.

Told in the third person point of view, the story follows Medora as she is devastated by the suicide of her father, abandoned emotional by her mother, and accepted by her peers into a group of drugs and alcohol, and then by Willis. Druscilla explores the possibility of how a seventeen year old girl could be enthralled with an older man and fall prey to his control. The story is well told, describing so well the area where the old trailer was that when I went to Yuma after reading this book I wondered if I was looking at the canyon where Medora used to live. I not only felt the dust of the red soil as it covered everything, I also felt the anxiety of Medora as she faced her conscience, and Willis' anger. I saw the squalor of the place they called home, the loneliness as Medora sat on the rock, isolated from everyone else.

This is a very well written story I will not forget.

I received this Advanced Reader's Copy book free from the author, Drusilla Campbell for the purpose of review. She did not ask for a postive critique, just an honest one, which I have tried to do. The opinions stated in here, are my own. Thanks, Drusilla.