Cindy

by John Benton

Cindy's life of prostitution and her heroin habit conflict with her responsibilities as a mother. Can she be born again?

125 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

Reviews

[Majenta · Rating 4 out of 5]

This might have been the only John Benton book I read that was written in the third person; they're usually written in first person from the viewpoint of the title character, a teenage or occasionally slightly-older troubled girl getting into, or already pretty deep into, trouble with drugs, guns, alcohol, prostitution, or some combination.

CINDY is about such a girl, but the first person we meet is a successful businessman. He's reading the morning paper and getting disgusted with yet another parade of crime stories. Suddenly he asks his driver to take a surprising detour. And back in the office he discovers something surprising about a young woman who works in his office building, and gets his secretary to summon her for some illuminating realtalk.

This does come around to Cindy Lippincot, a drug addict and prostitute who has a young daughter, Melody. Cindy might have been one of the people the businessman witnessed on his detour. But she was definitely seen by the police and they follow her to her apartment. Cindy's dealt with the police, she's done jail time, she's had to "kick cold turkey" in the jail cell--complete with being ordered to clean up her own vomit afterward. What about Melody? Could she be taken away? What about Cindy's own parents, are they still out there somewhere? Once Cindy is finally introduced, you'll care about her as her life falls apart and she is offered a real chance to climb out of the muck. But that was an interesting beginning. It "works."

Thanks for reading.

[Dawn Michelle]

I am not sure how to rate this now - if it was back in 1979[ish - I was 11 when I started that school] when I first picked this [and the rest of the John Benton books] book up off the "library" shelf at the very small Christian school I attended [WHO thinks these kind of books were okay for sheltered, naive, uninformed kids? Because they had a "christian" message, that made them okay. Trust me, we were not reading them for that message, that's for darn sure], I would have rated it 5 stars. I was totally into these books as it showed a world I had never seen before and I read them over and over and over again. I could have cared less about the "message"; it was all about the details and the "sex" and the salaciousness of them. And now, as an adult who has seen the world and looks at things through a much different lens, these books seem..tawdry and very sensationalized and a bit scandalous IMO. So I am going to leave this one [and all the others that I am going to review [with this same review] with no rating. I am really torn now, as an adult, as to what I think about these books.