Mud Girl

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

For 16-year-old Aba “Abi” Zytka Jones, who lives in an isolated
house literally perched over the muddy Fraser River in Delta, B.C., the
best part of her Grade 11 year had been its keeping her away from home
for a good portion of each day. Now, two months of summer holidays means
having to spend significantly more time with her increasingly reclusive
father, Will, someone she seemingly no longer knows.

Changes in Will’s formerly outgoing personality began when he was
laid off from his mill job and did not find other employment, but they
accelerated following his wife’s unexpected desertion 10 months ago.
With Will’s Unemployment Insurance benefits exhausted, he and an
embarrassed Abi live on welfare and the charity of a food bank. Though
Abi recognizes she must do something about her father’s deteriorating
mental state, she fears the fallout might include her being placed in a
foster home.

The outside world intrudes on Abi, first in the form of middle-aged
Mary Rhodes, who appears as Abi’s Big Sister, and then in the handsome
shape of Jude Arden, 20, the single parent of a two-year-old son, Dyl.
Though romantically and sexually awakened by Jude, Abi comes to realize
that he’s a self-centred fraud who has left Dyl’s parenting to his
own terminally ill mother.

In her first novel for young adults, Acheson cleverly intertwines the
lives of the various characters. Abi ultimately comes to discover her
missing but needed mother figure while perhaps also assuming a mothering
role herself. Recommended.