Girl Bomb A halfway homeless memoir

Janice Erlbaum was just 15 when she gave her mother an ultimatum: 'If you let Dave come back again, I'm leaving'. And then her mother did it anyway - she let her violent third husband come back, despite a protection order, a kidnap attempt, divorce proceedings and her daughter's terrified pleas.

For the next three years Janice moved from shelter to shelter, having sex with hoods in squats and stairwells, doing acid, forming friendships, going to clubs and stealing. She ended up with 'The man of my dreams, a dazzling criminal club kid named Sebastian'. Within six months they were living together and struggling with a whopping cocaine addition. One night Sebastian saved her life after an overdose and they quit cold turkey. But their problem didn't end there. Just as they were getting their lives together, and Janice was about to graduate from high school and start college, she had an affair, betraying the first man who had truly loved her.

Janice Erlbaum paints a wry, mesmerising portrait of being underprivileged, underage, and underdressed in New York, bouncing from shelters to group homes, from tenement squats to legendary nightclubs. Moving yet tremendously entertaining, Girlbomb is an unflinching look at street life, survival sex, friendship and first love told with humour and wit.

Janice Erlbaum is a writer and poet and now lives in her native New York City with her boyfriend and three cats, where she writes, performs, and volunteers at a shelter for homeless teens.

Girl Bomb
Random House Australia
Author: Janice Erlbaum
ISBN: 1863255087
RRP: 24.95


Review: Gripping, Girlbomb gets down and dirty with street life in America and the events that could change a young girls life forever. Every parent should read!