Life without Consequences

A Life without Consequences is about Paul, a ward of the court stuck in various juvenile institutions. He meets Tanya when they are fourteen and locked up in Chicago's Henry Horner Adolescent Psychiatric Unit, a psychiatric facility pri-marily for runaways and the very poor. Because it costs the state the same whether the children are in locked facilities or specialised fos-ter homes, there is very little impetus for the state to move the chil-dren once they are inside. Paul and Tanya are separated for four years, Tanya to a prison downstate, Paul to group homes in the city. Paul rebels against the system and against his own adolescence. A self determined kid with a record, Paul tries to succeed in schools where children aren't taught to read. He tries to get straight in homes where drug abuse and violence are the norm. He tries to find affection in families where the children are constantly being moved and the guardians are paid six dollars an hour to look after kids they have no stake in or relation to. This is a book about commitment. This is a book about adoles-cence and growing up set against the backdrop of a juvenile system pre-programmed to fail. This is a book about children that have been forgotten and have nowhere else to go. This is a semi-autobiographical novel from emerging author Stephen Elliott, a former ward of the court and current Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.