The Saver

By Edeet Ravel

Book Overview

Seventeen-year-old Fern has not had many breaks in life. She struggles at school and lives with her mother in a roach-infested apartment. Then, suddenly, her mother has a heart attack and dies, and Fern is devastated. But she's a survivor, and she's not afraid of hard work. Sidestepping social services, she quits school and sets out to look after herself. With a little luck and ingenuity and a lot of determination, she manages to live rent-free by becoming a janitor in a crummy apartment building. When she runs out of toothpaste she gets freebies from dentists' offices. Then she tries to juggle two other shift jobs, including one in a restaurant kitchen, so she has access to leftover food. But despite her resourcefulness and resolve, the exhaustion and stress eventually take their toll, until Fern discovers that she is not really on her own after all.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 088899883X
• ISBN13: 9780888998835
• Release Date: April 2010
• Publisher: Groundwood Books
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.0" x 6.9"
• Age Range: 14 years and up
• Grade Range: Grades 8 to 9

Customer Reviews

Moving, poignant story

Seventeen-year-old Fern has not had an easy life. She's not pretty or attractive; she and her mother are not well off, and she isn't that interested in or good at school. Then Fern's mother dies and she has to figure out how to manage all on her own. Told through the letters Fern writes to her extra-terrestrial friend Xanoth, Fern's story is by turns realistic, haunting, funny, sad and completely believable. Anyone who has ever written another person off as "marginal" or "unimportant" should read this book. It is great to see Fern's progression from mere survival to friendship to... who knows? I hope Ravel features her as a side character in a future novel - with that brains and determination, it would be fascinating to see the direction her life might take.