If, like me, you found the "Girl Scout Handbook" shining in the dark night of your childhood like a beacon of happiness, you will want to read Tupelo Hassman's "Girlchild," just to know how irresistible and sadistic that fantasy really was. Not that it was all bad; it may even have saved the life of 7-year-old Rory Hendrix, narrative protagonist and reluctant resident of Calle de las Flores, a trailer park named after streets and flowers but which, in fact, sports only dirt roads and weeds.

If you wanted flowers, the harmless lush where your mom worked would make you toilet-paper roses, dozens of them. Your mother keeps the rose man at a distance, but in Calle de las Flores, every man is a wolf in sheep's clothing, even though, don't worry, their crimes do not go unavenged.

Hassman's portrait of what she would call, with sorrow, anger and bitter pride, a "white trash childhood," is a little like the Girl Scout manual itself. It is, if you read it closely, full of useful information (the Right Use of Your Own Body, Finding Your Way When Lost). Of course, Rory's real way out of these woods is to grow up, and to grow up scarred and wounded. Alcoholism and neurosis make her mother a case in point: "Bartenders Guide; 'The American Dream': Equal parts sweat and heedless disregard. Dash of Bitters. Lucky Twist. Stir. Strain. Garnish."

Rory is the last in a line of women whose choices have been so bad and sad that the Supreme Court justice's famous admonition about "three generations of imbeciles are enough" -- used to uphold forced sterilization -- may well have been written about her family.

She knows that the crocheted God's Eyes her grandma makes are working-class kitsch, and she also knows that there will come a time when she will hand them, proudly, to only her most special friends.

This mixture of pride and shame is typical of Rory's survival strategy. She uses denial to stay alive; the sludge- and snapping turtle-choked pond by her home will never be lovely, but her grandmother's green thumb pretties it up just enough for her to picture a lily pad-dappled lake.

Star Tribune, Star Tribune
Tupelo Hassman

Sometimes, of course, denial is as choked as any polluted puddle. Rory's mom decides to trust "Hardware Man," which turns out to be a mistake because the only way Rory can describe her "sleepovers" at his house is with censored prison letter prose like this: "Here's how Hardware Man makes the light go out: ________________________________________________"

For an entire page. That dark.

Rory somehow knows how to "blackwash" the truth into revealing itself. Her grandmother's gardening does make that puddle into a beautiful pond, and, by the end of the book, Rory is strong enough to handle it. She has, after all, memorized the "Girl Scout Handbook," and if you plaster it on like a poultice -- well, it may be uncomfortable at first, but, by God, it keeps the swelling down.

Emily Carter is a writer in Connecticut.