Lutie McFee’s history has taught her to avoid attachments...to people, to places, and to almost everything. With her mother long dead and her father gone to find his fortune in Las Vegas, fifteen-year-old Lutie lives in the godforsaken town of Spearfish, South Dakota, with her eleven-year-old brother, Fate, and Floy Satterfield, the three-hundred-pound ex-girlfriend of her father. While Lutie shoplifts for kicks, Fate spends most of his time reading, watching weird TV shows, and worrying about global warming.
As if their life were not dismal enough, one day, while shopping in their local Wal-Mart, Floy keels over and the two motherless kids are suddenly faced with the choice of becoming wards of the state or hightailing it out of town in Floy’s old Pontiac. Choosing the latter, they head off in search of a father who has no known address, no phone number, and no particular interest in the kids he left behind.
Alternately heartbreaking and life-affirming, MADE IN THE U.S.A. is the story of two gutsy children who must discover how cruel, unfair, and frightening the world is before they finally find a place where they belong.