Review Detail

Review: Songs for a Teenage Nomad is a novel with depth. It really encapsulates teen emotion and while poignant, the novel is very lifelike in that it keeps up with witty sarcasm and comedy, while also making you really think. Calle will make you laugh and cry, and every song she "remembers". The characters are real. The dynamics of high school are realistic and balanced, and Calle's quiet strength and determination are characteristics that everyone wishes they had.
Summary: Calle has moved around her whole life, since her father left, and when she and her mother end up in Andreas Bay, California, Calle assumes that it will be more of the same. But when her mother seems to settle down with her new boyfriend and her now job, Calle settles into a new life too; new friends and a new place in school, a new crush with a complicated past, and a girl who has a mysterious link with him.

For a while, things go pretty smoothly. And then, Calle's mom and her mom's boyfriend have a fight, and Calle worries that her flighty mother will pack them up and move them out again. But Calle's mother assures her that they won't. Calle finds a letter from her father in her mother's drawer, and discovers that her father has been looking for them for a long time. Calle is furious, but her mother insists that there are things that Calle doesn't know about her father. Calle agrees to leave it alone, but she's not being truthful.

Calle's mother and her boyfriend break up, and Calle realizes that soon, her mother will insist on leaving. Upset, Calle tells her crush, Sam, about it. Sam tells his father, who procures Calle's mom a new address and a new job, and things go back to almost better than normal, except for Calle's fight with her mom. One night, Calle has coffee by herself while reading a book for English. While she's drinking, her father walks in and they talk.

Calle comes home from school one day to find her father in the apartment, yelling at her mother. She tells him to leave, and he does, but Calle's mother says they still have to go.

On their way out, they stop in at a gas station to get supplies, and they discover that there's been a car crash on the nearby highway. Calle and her mother know immediately who it is that died in the crash. They turn around and go back to Andreas Bay.