Seventeen-year-old Dolina May has just stormed out of her drunken boyfriend’s parked car in the middle of a torrential downpour. She stomps away down a muddy country road in the middle of nowhere Manitoba. This heroine, with a nose ring and clunky-heeled black shoes, has jagged edges. “People have names for my mother,” she explains, “like slut, whore, addict.” People have names for Dolina May, too, but you cheer for her. You cheer because she got out of that car.

Winnipeg writer Ishbel Moore has written three children’s novels; this is her first young adult novel, and she has a drawer full of adult short story prizes. The prizes are a reflection of Moore’s confident use of humour and the lively description that peppers this story. Moore has also succeeded in making a dialogue-driven novel appear effortless and honest.

Sopping and sulky, Dolina May is rescued from a swampy field by a handsome farm youth who has a penchant for stray animals. Spencer Cameron can’t return her to Winnipeg until Monday when he returns to university. So, street-smart Dolina spends a weekend with the Cameron family. She undergoes a momentary transformation at a wedding, helps birth a calf, and even bakes some apple pies. Dolina is forever putting her foot wrong, but she’s bright, has never had an egg sunny-side-up, and can’t remember ever being hugged. We forgive her and keep cheering as romance and self-esteem flicker in the glow of the farm kitchen light.

Moore’s primary characters – Dolina, Spencer, and the Camerons – ring clear. Less sure are the secondary and minor characters, like Mitch, Dolina’s jerk ex-boyfriend, and Samantha, Spencer’s jerk ex-girlfriend. A more comprehensive sketch of offstage players, particularly Dolina’s addicted mother and alcoholic grandma, would have enriched the novel. Finally, because the story is so compressed, some key transitional scenes, such as Mitch’s reappearance, are plopped too nakedly on the page. But then Dolina May is, after all, a story about just one weekend. In that time, Moore successfully delivers a heroine who has been force-bloomed from a sodden and prickly weed to a quite splendid dandelion.