A Dance for Three

Sharply etched characters and varied narrators elevate Plummer's (The Unlikely Romance of Kate Bjorkman) tale of a pregnant, troubled 15-year-old girl well above the confines of a problem novel. Since Hannah Ziebarth's father died two years ago of a freak occurrence (asphyxiation after a burp), Hannah's mother has turned agoraphobic and increasingly helpless; Hannah has assumed full care of her. Discovering she is pregnant, Hannah is sure her boyfriend, Milo, will marry her, and she begins to imagine a happy future with Milo's family. But when she tells him, he brutally assaults her: "" `Whore!' he says. He rubs the blood off his fist and walks away."" The stress overwhelms Hannah, landing her in an adolescent psychiatric ward. Hannah narrates much of the novel, but her best friend, Trilby, and Milo's brother, Roman, also have their say, filling in parts of the story Hannah cannot or will not see. There are some weaknesses (e.g., the author appears to take short cuts with both Hannah's breakdown and recovery), but Plummer's uncanny ability to project details and human idiosyncrasies onto her characters makes her enterprise a believable one. Hannah and the others seem to have lives beyond the page; they, even more than their struggles, are memorable. Ages 14-up. (Mar.)