Bardi, Abby. The Book of Fred (New York: Washington Square Press, 2001) 292 p.

Alice Cullison, a librarian, becomes a foster mother to a teenage girl who has been raised in a religious compound. The library is not part of the story but we do hear this from Alice, “I’d go to a workshop on our new CD-ROM databases, which seemed destined never to function properly, or enter data about the library’s new acquisitions into our new online catalogue, which was also always on the blink, and all I could think about was that I wanted to lie down on the floor behind the circulation desk where no one could see me and take a nap, or maybe cry.” (p. 58). Alice is kind and generous but does not have much imagination.