Sixteen-year-old Angel is living with manipulative Call, who offered attention, physical affection, and a bottomless supply of crack after her mother’s death. Now Angel is turning tricks for Call on a Vancouver street corner. Then Call shows up with eleven-year-old Melli, and Angel knows she can’t stand by and watch him destroy her life. Determined to save Melli if not herself, she stops using crack, suffering mightily from withdrawal, and bargains with Call to earn the money of two girls each night, as long as he won’t force Melli to start working. Martine Leavitt’s fearless journey into Angel’s dark world is written as a novel in verse in Angel’s quietly haunting voice. Chapter headings are taken from Paradise Lost , a book that one of Angel’s customers has her read and discuss with him. The story is powerful, the writing affecting and compelling, and Leavitt’s afterword, about a serial killer who targeted women and girls on the streets of Vancouver during the 1980s and 1990s while police failed to vigilantly pursue the crimes, is heartbreaking and enraging. (In the novel, Angel’s friend Serena has recently disappeared and rumors and fear abound.) But there is also, before that end, Angel’s triumph as she outsmarts Call, gets Melli to safety, and takes the first steps toward reclaiming her life. (Age 15 and older)

When sixteen-year-old Angel meets Call at the mall, he buys her meals and says he loves her, and he gives her some candy that makes her feel like she can fly. Pretty soon she's addicted to his candy, and she moves in with him. As a favor, he asks her to hook up with a couple of friends of his, and then a couple more. Now Angel is stuck working the streets at Hastings and Main, a notorious spot in Vancouver, Canada, where the girls turn tricks until they disappear without a trace, and the authorities don't care. But after her friend Serena disappears, and when Call brings home a girl who is even younger and more vulnerable than her to learn the trade, Angel knows that she and the new girl have got to find a way out.