The girl with a baby

Summary: Jane has always been the good Williams. Her brothers might be high school dropouts and rowdy late-night partiers, but never Jane, who never drinks, smokes dope, or misses a single a day of school. She is part of the drama club, gets top marks, and is one of the popular kids. Or she used to be. Now she's one of those: the teenage mothers packing diaper bags with their knapsacks, wheeling strollers into the high-school daycare, tired and grumpy. Jane's only fourteen, younger than most of them, and she can feel the stares in the school halls. She can hear the whispers on her whitebread street, too: Too bad, gone the way of her brothers, guess those Indians are all the same. Jane isn't what she used to be -- but then, maybe she's more. When the baby was being born, Jane's grandmother told her she came from a long line of strong mothers, and Jane is discovering it's true. Because of baby Destiny, Jane dares to demand the best, not just of herself, but of her whole family. This Jane accepts the consequences of her decisions, good and bad, and pushes through prejudices the former Jane just tiptoed around. This Jane is a strong link in something bigger than herself. She's a girl with a baby, two feet on the ground, one hand in the warm grasp of Teh and her Indian past, and the other holding firmly to the future.