Bad Girls

Anna Wheeler is a girl whose parents are quite upset with her, and they get her taken to Camp Archstone, a “bootcamp for troubled teen girls.”

The story opens with Anna trying to escape from the thugs who have kidnapped her, with her parent's cooperation. (Her father is a religious fanatic.) She is captured again and forced back into the same van she was first placed in. She told her father she hates him when they were hauling away.

(Sort of like what the Prisoner said in one episode; that he would return to the Village and obliterate it, and Number 2 along with it.)

The camp itself is a typical boot camp, military format, with adults threatening children, basically. (Here is something else I don't understand. The adults in the camp don't seem to be armed. They are outnumbered by the girls. If the girls really wanted to, they could overpower the guards and staff by sheer numbers. )

There's also a Bible hour, so the camp seems to be run by Christian extremists. This is backed up by a book they give the girls. This isn't a camp for correcting bad behavior; it's a camp for brainwashing girls. One of the girls describes punishment cages with match the description of those used by the Japanese in their prisoner-of-war camps. Thus, the camp basically violates the Geneva Convention. The more description is given of the camp and how it runs, the more it resembles a WWII P.O.W. camp in the Pacific, and one of the worse ones at that. The only difference (as of page 60) is that no girls are killed on purpose or die accidentally. Otherwise, physical conditions, mental conditions, threats, violence, limited food, etc. are almost identical. (The physical facilities are, admittedly, somewhat better than the average P.O.W. camp, but not by much. I have gone through well over a hundred books dealing with World War II, mainly the Pacific Theater, so I'm fairly well acquainted with what the P.O.W. camps were like. )

One of the girls was sent to the camp by her racist, homophobic mother since the white girl was caught having sex with a black girl.

She finds out that the camp will force girls to take medications if they feel it is necessary. The camp personnel will enforce Bible hours, and they don't care if the girl reading the Bible is not a Christian.

Anna and a group of girls go on a ten-mile hike. They have full, heavy backpacks, and it's under conditions of high heat and humidity. One of the girls is injured when her ankle gets speared by a broken branch. Then someone shoots the remaining counselor, (a poacher, maybe), and the girls are on their own, having run into the forest during the chaos caused by the shooting.

The next day Anna is able to make contact with three other of the girls. Anna and Stacey find another girl, but she has gone insane and they can't get her to join their small group of survivors.

Other girls turn up, and a problem arises between the two groups about what their course of action should be. One of the girls spots a guy that could be the one that shot the counselor, and he could now be after them. Later one of the girls walks away and doesn't return. The next morning the remaining girls set off, hoping to reach a town. Later, they leave another girl behind who can't keep up.

They find a cave, but they hear a girl screaming and another shot. They hide in the caves, but a guy comes in soon after. It turns out he's mentally unstable, and there's another man who is is due to come back, and he does.

The girls are put in a off-branch of the main cave. Two other guys arrive and kill the two already there, and then they leave.

The remaining girls leave the cave (leaving one behind who is injured), and walk through the forest until they find a hut. A blind woman lives there, and they stay a while and then leave, setting out for what they hope will be a town. The rest of the story is about how there are only two girls left trying to reach the town, and only one of them makes it. The story recaps how many girls were rescued, and how many died, and how many were still missing.

Anna does seem to grow a lot in the story, and seems to come to realize that what happened with the abortion was not all her fault alone. She also seems to have achieved some level of confidence in herself, hopefully enough to be able to stand up to her own parents, especially her religious-extremist father. I wish there had been an ending showing that, since I think that it would have strengthened the story. As it ends, we know she's grown, but we don't know if she's grown enough to be able to deal with the challenges she faces.

Also, a warning. There are a few very graphic scenes of violence in this book.

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