Gateway

by Lee Robinson

Thirteen-year-old Margaret "Mac" Whitford's life is spinning out of control. Her parents are getting divorced, and Mac is caught in the middle of their bitter custody battle. Mac feels like the trophy in a championship prizefight. Her mother and father are so busy talking to judges and lawyers and therapists, they forget about the one person who really matters--Mac.



Enter Henrietta Porter LePage Middleton, Mac's seventy-something court-appointed guardian. Henrietta wears a red beret and rides a double bicycle in the wrong direction down one-way streets. Henrietta works at the museum and enjoys art and books and music. When Mac's with Henrietta, she feels like her old self again. And with Henrietta in her corner, Mac knows she'll find the courage to stand up for herself and fight for what's right--for everyone.

176 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published March 13, 1996

About the author

Lee Robinson practiced law in Charleston, S.C. for over 20 years and was elected the first female president of the Charleston Bar Association. She has been writing since high school. Her first book of poetry, Hearsay, won the Poets Out Loud Prize from Fordham University Press, and she is a three-time winner of the South Carolina Arts Commison's Fiction Prize. She and her husband, Jerald Winakur, were co-recipients of the Literary Excellence Award from Gemini Ink, San Antonio's center for the literary arts. Lee lives on a ranch in the Texas hill country, where she is surrounded by many wild critters--some of them human!

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This summer, I was talking to Harriet McDougal Rigney, who is not only a friend, but an editor I respect a great deal. The subject was novels set in Charleston, written for a middle school/YA crowd. Harriet asked if I'd read this book, which had somehow gone completely beneath my radar. I found a copy, and curled up on this rainy Sunday to read a book set in my beloved Charleston.

The author used her experience and familiarity with the Charleston legal system (she was a public defender here for many years, and very active in the legal aid program) and a keen eye for both the beauty and quirks of Charleston to good use. The book is the story of a custody battle told from a teenager's point of view. There is wisdom in these pages, and a true sense of Charleston. Part of the story (including the title) takes place in one of my favorite spots in all of Charleston: the gateway garden walk leading from King Street, behind the apartments and houses I have longed to live in, to the gloriously overgrown, ramshackle garden/graveyard of the Unitarian church. Anyone I've taken on a walk around Charleston can testify to my love of that walk and graveyard. It's a must see on the private czukie tour, and a place where I can often be found on Sundays, curled up on a bench, reading before choir practice starts at the church I attend.

I particularly liked the end solution of this book. Mac's experience of being shuttled between the homes of two warring parents is one I saw happen to friends whose parents divorced. I always thought custody considerations particularly unfair to kids, what with all the too-ing and fro-ing. I liked the way this worked out.