Lucy Hull is fresh out of college when she accepts a job as a children's librarian in Hannibal, Missouri. Her boss is a forgetful probably heavy drinking head librarian. The other two librarians don't seem to be any more effective. Rocky is the only fellow librarian who Lucy can form a friendship with and she is guessing he is falling in love with her. Lucy originally hails from Chicago and is the daughter of a bombastic Russian immigrant who left the former USSR under a cloud of rebellion. Lucy's father is disappointed that she has not reached for something greater in life than a librarian in small town Missouri. He wants her to use his many connections for something better.
Into the library walks Ian Drake...more like storms into the library. He is always with a babysitter who seems to direct his reading toward areas Ian continues to resist. Then Ian's mother comes in and gives Lucy a list of what Ian should be dissuaded from reading. The list includes Harry Potter, anything magic, with dragons, wizards or or features weaponry, the Theory of Evolution, Halloween, or is "written by Roald Dahl, Lois Lowry, Harry Potter (sic) and similar authors."
Lucy begins to help Ian smuggle books out of the library, checking them out on her card. Ian brings Lucy a Christmas gift of a origami Baby Jesus in the Manger. As she examines the gift further she sees that it is fashioned from a page of a testimonial written by his mother. Ian's family is sending him to Pastor Bob's Glad Heart Ministries that is dedicated to the "rehabilitation of sexually confused brothers and sisters in Christ." Ian, who is commonly thought of as a budding 10 year old gay boy, IS only 10 years old. Lucy cannot let this go as she continues to bring her horror of Ian's situation to her lunches with Rocky. But what can she do?
One Sunday she goes into the library early to work on a program and finds Ian hiding in the library with a back pack. She decides to take him home but he first leads her through Hannibal and then threatens her that if she takes him home he will claim she kidnapped him. Thus kidnapped is Lucy...a willing victim of her kidnapper and actually is really helping her kidnapper to run away from the homelife Lucy finds horrific.
Lucy and Ian begin a cross country journey together. The book is very funny. It is written in first person as Lucy is the narrator. Ian and Lucy have much in common: especially their capacity to recreate reality via story telling (read--lying).
Through the whole book I wonder if Lucy will get arrested for kidnapping. I wonder if Ian really has a grandmother in Vermont? Is Lucy's father part of the Russian mafia?
Does Lucy save Ian? Can a person really leave home?
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