Crosses

First-time novelist Stoehr draws a hard-hitting, graphically realistic portrait of troubled adolescents who indulge in alcohol, drugs, sex, shoplifting and ``cutting'' themselves, deliberately, an activity that somehow assuages inner turmoil. Fifteen-year-old Nancy's first-person narrative, more a journal than a story, spans the years 1985 to 1988. This intrinsically intelligent teenager embodies the punk look and attitude. Meeting Katie, a like-minded schoolmate who becomes her closest friend, draws Nancy even deeper into a risk-taking ideology that occasionally results in ineffectual punishment at school and at home--where the environment is hardly idyllic. Expletives abound in this provocative work, and one hopes that the contents won't inspire like behavior among foolishly curious readers. Yet this morbidly compelling chronicle of promising lives gone astray commands attention throughout. Ages 14-up. (Nov.)