Being Fishkill

By Ruth Lehrer

Subjects: Poverty, fiction, Abandoned children, fiction, Poverty, Family problems, Family problems -- Fiction, Families -- Juvenile fiction, Families, Abandoned children -- United States -- Juvenile fiction, Friendship -- Fiction, Poverty -- United States -- Juvenile fiction, Fiction, Children's fiction, Friendship -- Juvenile fiction, Juvenile fiction, United states, fiction, Abandoned children, Friendship

Description: Born in the backseat of a moving car, Carmel Fishkill was unceremoniously pushed into a world that refuses to offer her security, stability, love. At age thirteen, she begins to fight back. Carmel Fishkill becomes Fishkill Carmel, who deflects her tormenters with a strong left hook and conceals her secrets from teachers and social workers. But Fishkill's fierce defenses falter when she meets eccentric optimist Duck-Duck Farina, and soon they, along with Duck-Duck's mother, Molly, form a tentative family, even as Fishkill struggles to understand her place in it. This fragile new beginning is threatened by the reappearance of Fishkill's unstable mother and by unfathomable tragedy.