Seventeen-year-old Fern has not had many breaks in life. She struggles at school and lives with her mother in a roach-infested apartment. Then, suddenly, her mother has a heart attack and dies, and Fern is devastated. But she's a survivor, and she's not afraid of hard work. Sidestepping social services, she quits school and sets out to look after herself.

With a little luck and ingenuity and a lot of determination, she manages to live rent-free by becoming a janitor in a crummy apartment building. When she runs out of toothpaste she gets freebies from dentists' offices. Then she tries to juggle two other shift jobs, including one in a restaurant kitchen, so she has access to leftover food. But despite her resourcefulness and resolve, the exhaustion and stress eventually take their toll, until Fern discovers that she is not really on her own after all.

Edeet was born on a kibbutz and lived in Israel until the age of seven. She has a PhD in Jewish studies from McGill and graduate degrees in literature and creative writing. She has taught at McGill, Concordia and John Abbott College. In addition to her award-winning novels for adults, Edeet has written Held, a YA thriller that was nominated for the CLA Young Adult Book of the Year, the Saskatchewan Willow Award, the Pennsylvania School Librarians Association Top Forty and the Arthur Ellis Best Juvenile Crime Award. Her YA novel The Saver has been adapted for film by Wiebke von Carolsfeld; the film has garnered prizes around the globe. Edeet lives in Guelph, Ontario, and gets her best ideas at the Y swimming pool. Her name is pronounced ee-DEET.

Edeet Ravel's profile page

[The protaganist's] determination to find a better place is both understandable and laudable...a strong and clever teenager.

VOYA

Written as a series of letters to an imaginary friend on another planet, [The Saver is] a compelling story of determination and the will to survive.

School Library Journal