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Teenage Runaway
Book by Benton, John
- GenresChristian Fiction
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 16, 2022
I picked this, and a few other "vintage" John Benton paperbacks, up at a thrift store. I recognized many of them from my youth, and thought it would be fun to revisit what I thought was titillating at 10. I remember reading Patti numerous times. I remember Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway as well. I thought Benton wrote both, but it seems Dawn was a novelization of the movie starring Eve Plumb. Anyhoo...
Oh my goodness! I have never read anything so corny in my life. Clearly I didn't recognize the corn at 10, but it just oozed from the pages this time around. Poor Becky, the first person narrator of this tiny book, discovers she is pregnant on the first page of the book. Calls the father who denies it, despite the fact that he was her first and only. Her home life isn't great. She runs away.
Along her travels she gets into some trouble, meets a lot of Christians while hitchhiking, stays with some relatives and is thrust into the company of a... Wiccan! I kid you not. This other girl asks if she is interested in the occult and goes on to say she and her family are, and would Becky like to join her coven. If this were written today it would be marketed as dark comedy. No one could believe what happens in these pages.
Of course everything works out great. Her dad, who in her absence left her mom for another woman, comes home, to a newly living for Jesus mom and Becky, and soon to be grandchild. Everything is going to be A-Ok now because this family has found God.
These books, and they are all similar, were actually dangerous in retrospect. The girls always run into drugs, prostitution, thievery, sometimes on a massive level, and eventually find Jesus and fly right. I have no problem with religion, but the truth is that even if you find it, you are still you, and your problems are still yours. These comic runaway road trips always end up happily and I am pretty sure that 99% of the runaways encountering what Benton's runaways encounter, are not going to end up ok. These books almost make it seem that running away is the first step to a better life. Geesh!
When writing these books,John Benton was the Director, with his wife Elsie, of The Walter Hoving Home for problem girls in New York. This institution is still in business (I checked) and has branched out to California and Nevada. On their site, the women that come to them for help with alcoholism, drug addiction, sex addiction and other BIG issues, are referred to as "the Ladies." and it says on the site that the cost for care is $2200.00 a month. Courses of stay are 6 or 12 months. I would like someone with the resources and know how to look into this. Sounds fishy to me.
Oh my goodness! I have never read anything so corny in my life. Clearly I didn't recognize the corn at 10, but it just oozed from the pages this time around. Poor Becky, the first person narrator of this tiny book, discovers she is pregnant on the first page of the book. Calls the father who denies it, despite the fact that he was her first and only. Her home life isn't great. She runs away.
Along her travels she gets into some trouble, meets a lot of Christians while hitchhiking, stays with some relatives and is thrust into the company of a... Wiccan! I kid you not. This other girl asks if she is interested in the occult and goes on to say she and her family are, and would Becky like to join her coven. If this were written today it would be marketed as dark comedy. No one could believe what happens in these pages.
Of course everything works out great. Her dad, who in her absence left her mom for another woman, comes home, to a newly living for Jesus mom and Becky, and soon to be grandchild. Everything is going to be A-Ok now because this family has found God.
These books, and they are all similar, were actually dangerous in retrospect. The girls always run into drugs, prostitution, thievery, sometimes on a massive level, and eventually find Jesus and fly right. I have no problem with religion, but the truth is that even if you find it, you are still you, and your problems are still yours. These comic runaway road trips always end up happily and I am pretty sure that 99% of the runaways encountering what Benton's runaways encounter, are not going to end up ok. These books almost make it seem that running away is the first step to a better life. Geesh!
When writing these books,John Benton was the Director, with his wife Elsie, of The Walter Hoving Home for problem girls in New York. This institution is still in business (I checked) and has branched out to California and Nevada. On their site, the women that come to them for help with alcoholism, drug addiction, sex addiction and other BIG issues, are referred to as "the Ladies." and it says on the site that the cost for care is $2200.00 a month. Courses of stay are 6 or 12 months. I would like someone with the resources and know how to look into this. Sounds fishy to me.
Displaying 1 of 1 review