THE MOST WANTED

When 14-year-old Arley Mowbray gets permission from her no-good mother and actually marries convicted felon Dillon Thomas LeGrande, she wants what the state of Texas says she's got coming to her--conjugal visits at the penitentiary. She hires public defender Annie Singer to get them. As Annie becomes a mother figure to Arley, events with Dillon go from bad to worse. Jacquelyn Mitchard, as author and narrator, compels us to care about a 14-year-old who gets herself pregnant and even about her outlaw husband. Mitchard generously portrays both Annie's sensible competence and her uncertainty about her own need to be a mother. An added surprise is Mitchard's ability to overlay her real-life Wisconsin accent with a believable Texas twang. E.K.D. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine [Published: JUN/JUL 01]