Don Kerr, [a] Saskatoon writer, will likely be showing up on [the] best-seller list soon with his new young adult novel, Candy on the Edge.
Kerr, an English professor when he’s not pounding out another manuscript, has been published in just about every other genre, including plays, poetry, short fiction, adult novel, and non-fiction, but Candy is his first venture in juvenile fiction. As with his other projects, this one is insightful and credible.
Candy McFarlane, 14, is the main protagonist. A straight-laced kid, she lives in a middle-class Saskatoon neighbourhood with her baby brother Norman and her parents. They love her a lot, though they’re getting increasingly confused as she enters that transition period between elementary and high school.
But their confusion is nothing compared to what Candy is feeling. A straight-A student, herself, she’s drawn to Andrea, a school dropout whose mother buys her cigarettes, and who has no respect for the law, or anything else.
And the more Candy’s mother orders her to stop seeing Andrea, the more she defies the order, though secretly she’s not sure why. She even admits to herself that she’s a little bit afraid of Andrea.
Instead of drawing back, however, she gets in deeper, meeting some of Andrea’s friends who shoplift, have police records, and generally live outside the law. Candy finds their free and easy lifestyles intriguing. But then these new friends take advantage of her naiveté and get her involved as an innocent dupe in a scheme to steal $7,000 from a bingo hall. It’s a cruel way to grow up in a hurry, as Candy finds out.
This is a gritty story, but one with human moments we can all recognize. It pulls no punches as it looks at the street lives of some teens and the home lives of others, but it neither preaches nor passes judgments.
It is also about parents, like Candy’s mother, who says, in one of many moments of total frustration, “I can’t tell what’s going on. Raising children is like playing lotto. Once in awhile you win.” That sentiment pretty well covers it all.
