"A Life without Consequences" is about Paul, a ward of the court
stuck in various juvenile institutions. He meets Tanya when they
are fourteen and locked up in Chicago's Henry Horner Adolescent
Psychiatric Unit, a psychiatric facility pri-marily for runaways
and the very poor. Because it costs the state the same whether the
children are in locked facilities or specialised fos-ter homes,
there is very little impetus for the state to move the chil-dren
once they are inside. Paul and Tanya are separated for four years,
Tanya to a prison downstate, Paul to group homes in the city. Paul
rebels against the system and against his own adolescence. A self
determined kid with a record, Paul tries to succeed in schools
where children aren't taught to read. He tries to get straight in
homes where drug abuse and violence are the norm. He tries to find
affection in families where the children are constantly being moved
and the guardians are paid six dollars an hour to look after kids
they have no stake in or relation to. This is a book about
commitment. This is a book about adoles-cence and growing up set
against the backdrop of a juvenile system pre-programmed to fail.
This is a book about children that have been forgotten and have
nowhere else to go. This is a semi-autobiographical novel from
emerging author Stephen Elliott, a former ward of the court and
current Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.
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