Adam & Eve & Pinch-Me

Julie Johnston is already celebrated for her Governor General's Award -- winning first novel, Hero of Lesser Causes (1992), and Adam and Eve and Pinch Me (Lester, 180 pages, $16.95 cloth) should further enhance her reputation. Set in rural Ontario, the story follows the metamorphosis of Sara Moone, its 15 - year - old heroine, from a defiant, introverted foster child who hates to be touched, into an involved and important member of her new family and community. The story also acquires a mythic dimension through the characters of quiet Hud and talkative Ma, the good couple who love and value Sara and teach her to love and value herself. Johnston's assured use of Sara as narrator of her own story -- she types it into her computer at the end of the day -- is an effective means of disclosing her emerging personality, and the unsettling arrival in the neighbourhood of Sara's birth mother adds conflict and suspense. All this plus teenage romance, thoroughly developed characters, and Sara's acid wit as she tells her story have produced a book that's a real "keeper." I just wish that Johnston hadn't made Ruth, Sara's social worker, into such a cotton - pickin' saint.