Title: Real Street Life
Product review: The street life for 16-year-old Johnny is a nightmare of crime, sexual exploitation, drugs and violence. It's not a life that he chose, but one that he was jettisoned into when he was forced to run away from an abusive foster parent. The plot thickens when Johnny lands on the cold midnight streets and alleys of Atlanta. Here, Johnny's core belief in his own worth as a human being is tested and he finds a simple goodness in a few runaway friends and in himself. He realizes that he can be more than a bought item that adults use and then dispose of without the slightest regard for him. The writing is gritty, edgy, full of violence and anger, but tempered with an almost poetic undercurrent that lessens the meanness and pain. The characters step from the pages fully developed and so believable that the reader cannot help but recognize these children as once being their neighbors, or maybe even being their own. This book will stay with you a long, long time.
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