cover image Leap of Faith

Leap of Faith

Jamie Blair. Simon & Schuster, $16.99 (240p) ISBN 978-1-4424-4713-4

In an urgent first-person narrative, 17-year old Faith recounts her grim life with her abusive, drug-addicted mother and the circumstances that motivate her to flee. Although inured to her mother’s frequent male visitors, Faith longs to save the baby her mother is carrying (for pay) for a guy that Faith considers “drug-dealing scum.” Kidnapping the newborn from the hospital, Faith drives from Ohio to Florida, determined to start a new life with baby Addy. While the challenges of infant care, combined with guilty fear, threaten to overwhelm Faith, she finds it more difficult to accept the acts of kindness, good fortune, and even romance that come her way (“I hate that some boy I don’t even know can make me feel like Addy and I have been saved”). Blair, who writes adult romance as Kelli Maine, crafts persuasive characters who have succumbed to bitterness, like Faith’s mother, as well as those who struggle to overcome hardship and tragedy and live with hope. Which path Faith will follow remains open through the novel’s hauntingly ambiguous end. Ages 14–up. Agent: Judith Ehrlich Literary Management. (Sept.)■