Purchased by the English department for grade 9 bookclubs.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 where break-ins are common and the neighbors are unfriendly. Yet despite the fact that her mum refuses to apply for the assistance she's entitled to as an aboriginal, the two of them are managing to cope. Her mother cleans houses, makes sure the rent is always paid and even finds time to bake Fern's favorite orange cake. Fern may not have many friends, but she has her mum, and Beauty, her cat. And she writes to an imaginary friend named Xanoth, who lives on a beautiful planet that is everything Fern's world is not. Then, suddenly, her mother has a heart attack and dies, and Fern is devastated. Apart from an uncle who has been in jail in Manitoba, she is utterly alone. 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 and Beauty. But how does a seventeen-year-old with no skills make money? Fern suddenly remembers something a grade school teacher once told her -- that if you never spent a penny, you could make a million dollars in fifteen years. So she decides to do just that -- work at as many jobs as she can, without spending a cent. 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 and loneliness of fending for herself eventually take their toll, and just when things seem about to unravel, Fern discovers that she is not really on her own after all.

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