The Second Chance Home for Girls

The Second Chance Home for Girls in Texas imposes a 12-step doctrine and Christian exhortation on a dozen teens with histories of substance abuse and other failures to conform. The proprietor Miss Sallyanne presides over a regimen of chores self-affirmation chants-God loves me and so do I!-and group therapy sessions in which she pressures girls to reveal their sinful experiences with drugs and (usually abusive) sex. Into the snake pit comes Lorilee who is preternaturally self-possessed despite the needle tracks on her arms and her claim to have borne a son by her own brother. She breaks rules with impunity knows secrets that she shouldnt and impudently corrects the Reverend Sallyannes father when his fire-and-brimstone sermon misstates the Bible. The narrative unwinds in the point-of-view voices of several residents of Second Chance. A chorus of girls condemns Lorilee as a stuck-up bitch; the seen-it-all cook Starlene thinks the teen is the devil; Summer a quiet girl who writes everything in her diary is both unnerved and inspired by Lorilees promise of forgiveness and freedom from her past a vow that leads to violence.