Thirteen year old Minta helps her unwed older sister, Tiff, deliver her baby at home while their parents are out for the evening. Weeks later, Tiff goes to a party and never returns. Their distraught mother accidently walks in front of moving car, getting badly hurt and requiring weeks in a rehabilitation center. Minta and her father cannot take care of the baby, Stevie, by themselves so her parents decide to put Stevie into foster care. Minta, imagining the horrors of foster care, runs away with him. Having nowhere to go, however, she ends up in Shacktown where shelters are made from whatever can be scrounged, food and heat are scarce, baby products such as diapers and formula are non-existent, and people do what they need to do in order to survive.

In an interview at the end of Saving Stevie, author Eve Richardson states that Minta is naïve and that runaways in general do not know what they are getting into. This is an adequate portrayal of the main character. The residents of Shacktown, both young and old, all deal with their situations in different ways, some optimistic, some depressed. While the characters are unique and interesting and the plight of these residents is adequately addressed, Saving Stevie is not a story that will resonate among most teenagers. Few kidnap their sister’s child and run off to a shanty town. The ending is anticlimactic and abrupt. Feel free to pass on this book. ( )