Sylvie isn't your average girl. When she dresses up she looks eighteen,
and she's spent the last three years in foster care plotting her escape
to Hollywood. But as Sylvie quickly learns on the road, zigzagging
across the Midwest in a stranger's two-tone blue Pontiac, life isn't
like the movies. Left broke and stranded in the middle of the country,
she has no choice but to accept the help of Walter Murchison, a Bible
salesman who is just a little too good at selling to be trusted.
Set in the 1950s against a backdrop of James Dean billboards and
jukeboxes blasting Elvis, Ellen Conford's classic 1982 road novel takes
place over the course of five days as we follow the comic misadventures
of fifteen-year-old Sylvie on her way from New York to California,
dreams of celluloid stardom gleaming in her head.
Ellen Conford is one of the most prolific and successful authors of
young adult fiction over the past quarter century. In addition to her
popular Jenny Archer and Annabel the Actress series, Conford has written
over thirty novels. Her children's book And This is Laura and the
story Revenge of the Incredible Dr. Rancid and His Youthful Assistant,
Jeffrey became ABC Weekend Specials, while her young adult novels Dear
Lovey Hart: I Am Desperate and The Alfred G. Graebner Memorial High
School Handbook of Rules and Regulations were used for CBS Schoolbreak
Specials.