cover image FROZEN RODEO

FROZEN RODEO

Catherine Clark, . . HarperTempest, $15.99 (304pp) ISBN 978-0-06-009070-8

Clark (Truth or Dairy) juggles more story lines than a circus performer does bowling pins in this wacky novel. High school student Peggy Fleming Farrell (named by her ice-skating father, she calls herself Fleming) spends yet another summer in Lindville, a cattle town, where she works at a coffee shop within a gas station in order to pay her parents back for totaling the family car (twice). She also baby-sits her three siblings (twins Torvill and Dean, plus Dorothy Hamill Farrell), coaches her weather-forecaster mom through Lamaze, takes a French class with a no-show teacher, and finds the boy she likes kissing his co-worker at the IHOP—and the plot has still not been set in motion. Fleming's dad agrees to skate at the town's Rodeo Roundup Days; a robber with a "fixation for scratch tickets" has been holding up gas stations; Fleming's joy ride in a stolen golf cart ends in disaster and she kisses one of her crush's best friends. Given the unrelenting quirkiness of characters, setting and plot developments, the story takes a long time to jell; readers who stick with Fleming's wildly offbeat narration, however, will be rewarded as the various elements come together in a fun-filled, fever-pitch conclusion. Ages 13-up. (Feb.)