Poor Margo

"Poor Margo" is the story of Margo Krup, a teenage girl from the Midwest who leaves her hometown to go to Hollywood. Margo is a misfit; she also plays the meanest guitar in town; not that there is any fierce competition in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, that, she has to admit. Poor Margo has a hard time at home; her folks are religious bigots, her kid brother, Mo, earns his pocket money by being the family snitch. Making music with a local band - the Wildcats - and hanging out with her girlfriend Charlie are Margo's only consolation. One day, she runs away from home, gets on a bus and goes to Hollywood. At the end of the road, there's Caesar, the Chicano boy she falls madly in love with, Max, the movie buff who manages a rock 'n' roll band -the Gringos- and Greg Jones, a Grand Funk ex-roadie who's writing his memoirs; there's also a bunch of strange and vulnerable people who inadvertently fill Margo's life with tenderness, excitement and desperation. And although Poor Margo is about being young and restless and wide-eyed in the big city, this is not a novel about sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll; it's the chronicle of a coming of age, a free fall and an unconditional yet unfulfilled love.