A lot of novels about women’s lives explore the domestic or romantic, but I wanted to explore the ways women seek out and find danger or trouble, rather than safety or security. As for Sara’s father, he believes his daughter is someone who should not be sheltered or controlled, but he’s not able to be present as a guide. Even though he’s not the typical “good father,” he gave her strength by raising her to question the world around her, to not worry about what others think.

Would you say that the strength of the women in your book has to do with some innate sense that women need to come together to overcome the pitfalls of the male world?

“A lot of novels about women’s lives explore the domestic or romantic, but I wanted to explore the ways women seek out and find danger or trouble, rather than safety or security.”

Their strength isn’t so much about bonding together—I think it arises from rebellion and desire. The girls in the book live in a world where there aren’t any real mothers, literally and metaphorically. It’s like when you see polls given to young women, when they ask them who their heroes are and they reply, “Madonna” or “Marilyn Monroe.” Those are the kind of women our culture values or presents as ideal. But Sara and the girls she befriends aren’t into the popular heroes; they’re all looking for, or becoming, their own kind of heroes or guides.

Sara mocks her high school reading material (Lord Jim, The Lord of the Rings) and bemoans the ending of Go Ask Alice (“Why did girls have to always die in the end?”). What books would you recommend to Sara beyond the world of Victoria, British Columbia—beyond Justine—and who might Sara’s role models be?

When I was Sara’s age, I was fascinated by women like Edie Sedgwick and Sylvia Plath. I don’t know why so many young girls are into those self-destructive icons, but I guess young men are also fascinated by those with extremely dramatic lives. I think one finds most of their role models in real life, especially when they’re missing in the mainstream culture. Literature has always been one of the constant areas to discover complicated and compelling young women—in works such as The Bluest Eye, Bastard Out of Carolina, Jane Eyre, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.

You describe life on the streets so vividly, from the camaraderie that develops among fellow runaways to their unrelenting hope of finding salvation someday in their lost families. How did you research life on the street?