RIDING IN CARS WITH BOYS: Confessions of...

RIDING IN CARS WITH BOYS: Confessions of a Bad Girl Who Makes Good by Beverly Donofrio (Penguin: $9.). As a lower-middle-class Italian-Catholic girl growing up in a small Connecticut town, Donofrio was eager to defy her parents, especially their injunction against joy-riding with hoods. The result of her defiance was every middle-class parent’s nightmare: She got pregnant, married the high school drop-out who fathered her child (and who subsequently became a heroin addict) and ended up a single mother on welfare. Donofrio had no illusions about the source of her problems, but she resented the way the baby limited her social and intellectual horizons, and sought refuge in smoking, drinking, drugs and promiscuity. Scholarships and social- welfare programs enabled her to go to college and become a writer capable of telling this unabashed coming-of-age story. The growing number of teen-age pregnancies and single-parent homes in America suggests that Donofrio speaks for thousands of otherwise silent women.