Cyd Charisse's benevolent stepfather calls her a "recovering hellion," and with good reason. She gets kicked out of her East Coast boarding school. She delights in her six-year-old half-sister's "gutter-mouthed" language. She ditches a family outing and stays out overnight to hang with her new, ultra-cool surfer boyfriend, Shrimp. Yet for all her tough attitude and crusty exterior, Cyd Charisse is one appealing softy.

Even when Cyd tries to be snotty, she ends up sounding world-wise, book-smart, and funny. When her mother informs her about the family's plan to visit museums and have ice cream one Sunday, Cyd tosses off, "Oh, could we really?" while, in her words, "doing my best impression of a Von Trapp child." When her nursing-home friend Sugar Pie, whom she meets while doing community service for a shoplifting incident, says Cyd is spoiled, Cyd reflects, "I like to think of myself as misunderstood." And when her mother is out of the house, Cyd helps the housekeeper make lasagna and cookies for the family of her mother's driver, Fernando, whose grandson is in remission from leukemia.

GINGERBREAD traces Cyd's evolution from a lonely girl looking for fun and comfort, darn the consequences, to a self-assured teenager who knows where she fits in the world: chatting with her newly discovered older siblings in New York, dolloping foam on cappuccinos in a hip coffeehouse, and deciding to participate in, if not always enjoy, life with her mom and stepdad in San Francisco. The book does have its dark moments, as when memories of upsetting events in her past resurface. Although Cyd has not quite resolved these issues by the end, she's beginning to be ready to talk.

This first novel by Cohn rollicks along not only because of Cyd's incisive humor but also because of her whimsical dreams. She periodically imagines future communes to which she will admit only the deserving --- one with a clan of "beautiful men," another with a "speak-no-evil-see-no-evil-hear-no-evil" mantra. When Cyd reunites with Shrimp in her friend's dance studio after being grounded for more than a week, she considers initiating a "zigzag combustible whoo-hoo freedom ride" to celebrate. And Cyd always carries a doll named Gingerbread that her dad bought for her in an airport when she was five. Toward the end of the book she has a chance to give the doll a cozy new home, but she decides that it's not time yet. Like many of us, she wants to savor a piece of her childhood just a little bit longer.

   --- Reviewed by Sarah Cooper

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