Brave New Wanda

A young adult comic novel "About a Matter of Life and Birth-or Bioethics-Texas Style." Wanda Louise Ledbetter-thirteen, "white trash," orphaned, mad, and too smart for her own good-is eyeballing every man leaving the doctors' entrance of the big hospital in Dallas. Perched on her mama's rusted-out Cadillac, she's been there all afternoon-ever since her stepfather, Harley, drunk and abusive after her mother's funeral, yelled out the secret nobody was ever supposed to know: Wanda's daddy wasn't her daddy, and not even her dead mama knew his name-because Wanda was made with donor sperm. So Wanda has grabbed her half-gone grandma and her half-dog Wild Thing and hit the road to find her "real" daddy. There's brave new trouble ahead, and Brave New Wanda is roaring toward it in her mama's junker Caddy.