Ella Thorp Ellis

This book is pretty dated in many ways -- it's nearly forty years old -- but April's struggle to keep her life under control is timeless. Children trying to deal with an inadequate parent (whether mentally ill like April's mother, or perhaps drug-addicted, or whatever) will definitely empathize with April. She is trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy, keep the sheriff away, keep herself from being sent to a foster home, and keep her mother from wandering off as she is prone to do.

Ellis does a magnificent job reworking and retelling her own teenage "affair" with the beautiful Indian "prince". Her writing is smooth and easy for younger readers, but not dumbed down, making it enjoyable to older readers as well. Any teenager that has ever fallen for an enigmatic and exotic foreigner (whether they have the beautiful eyes of an Indian, the magnificent complexion of a Pacific Islander, or the brogue of a Scotsman) can fully relate to Ellis's heroine.