Most of the women anchoring Celona's sinuously constructed first novel have indulged in a lifetime's worth of reckless behavior by the middle of adolescence. Shannon, the resilient narrator, observes her 16th birthday by running away from a nurturing adoptive home, honing her survival skills on the streets of Vancouver in the company of a homeless meth addict. By her 17th birthday, she's cut five stars into her lower calf - one each, perhaps, for the families that have tended her since she was abandoned as a newborn by her teenage mother. Shannon's unblinking account traces her trajectory from foster-home hell to teenage rage, dovetailed with the harrowing story of her mother's rough-and-tumble youth. If at times Celona belabors the lowerdepths ambience, she compensates by giving her protagonist, who's going blind in one eye, rousing olfactory gifts. To Shannon, Vancouver "smelled like rain and pizza," her addict father "like horses, like cheap cologne, like mint." When she arrives at a home where "every room smells like mushroom soup, except for the bathroom, which smells like Ivory soap," we know she's hit the jackpot. Jan Stuart is the author of "The Nashville Chronicles: The Making of Robert Altman's Masterpiece."