The Girl in the Backseat

the long version

The novel opens with Toby, a young girl in a Bountiful-style community, being caught secretly reading at night. The community leaders decide that she must be married at once to "the prophet," an older man. Hearing of the plan, Toby decides to escape to Winnipeg where she has a sympathetic aunt. Fortunately, at this moment she meets Jacob and Minerva Armstrong and learns they are on their way to Winnipeg in the family Mini. During the night, she steals away and hides herself in the backseat of the Mini. Jacob and Minerva have their own set of problems, since they are black and their Caribbean mother has recently remarried, this time to a penny-pinching Englishman who has two children of his own, and who seems wholly alien to the siblings. When the two Armstrong children discover Toby hiding in the backseat, she pleads with them not to tell their parents, since they will surely call the police. As the trio make their way across the country to Winnipeg, all sorts of problems arise as Jacob and Minerva learn more about Toby's plight.