Stories about street kids who live on the fringes of society, who are alienated and just about all of whom try to evade responsibility for their actions. Most are involved in petty crime, some are part and parcel of the drug scene, and a few are even involved in murder. The local citizens, traders and police try to keep the problems the street kids create out of the news and out of the eyes of tourists. On the one hand, they treat the kids in a heavy-handed fashion, on the other they support volunteer counsellors who look after the kids and try to steer them away from crime. Just about all the kids are runaways. They band together in groups and adhere to an odd code of loyalty to each other. Tom Howard works as a volunteer counsellor. He believes the kids are more sinned against than sinning. It is the adults with whom the kids come in contact, rather than the kids themselves, who are chiefly to blame for the problems. For instance, the kids flock to this particular city because it is widely advertised as a tourist paradise, a mecca where the sun never sets, a city of wondrous dreams. Another adult-caused backlash results from the heavy-handed attitude of the police, represented by the bullying Sergeant Quist, which leads to further rebellion and non-cooperation. Other problems are caused by hot gospellers who try to convert the kids to their own concepts of "true religion". So we have a city with many kids, much interaction, many stories. Some humorous, some dramatic, some sad, some suspenseful, some puzzling.
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The review of this Book prepared by John Reid