Runaway — Cheryl Zach

Discovering that she is pregnant, a teenage Cassie is sent away by her disapproving father to a home for wayward girls and forbidden to ever see Seth again, and Cassie must choose between her family and the boy she loves.

Cassie's father rules his cowering family with an iron fist. When Cassie's friendship with Seth turns romantic and results in pregnancy, her father has her placed in the McNaughton Home for Girls outside Knoxville, Tennessee. In effect, the quality of life is potentially better there for the sweet-natured teen, but Seth's quest to reach her takes such an intense, reckless turn that the two of them end up as fugitives on the run. The young father-to-be wants to make up for his own father's abandonment, whereas Cassie just wants the love and security she never had at home, as she confides to the reader through her diary.

Zach has written an overtly cautionary tale about the difficulty of teen parenthood and the wisdom of releasing a newborn to adoptive parents who can care for the child, but our sympathy for the characters and the fast-paced plot in which Cassie and Seth become increasingly desperate make this suspenseful teen romance a page-turner. (Grades 7 - 12)