It seems impossible that a book about a twelve-year old girl with a junkie father and a doomed future could be a pleasure to read. But first time novelist Heather O’Neill deftly weaves together the beauty and innocence of childhood with the struggles of being a neglected kid. Lullabies for Little Criminals is a gritty and stunning debut.

Baby’s mother is 15 years old when Baby is born and 16 years old when she (the mother) dies in a car accident. Baby is left in the joint care of her unfit father, an addict named Jules, and the Canadian government. Slinking through the underbelly of Montreal, Jules’s heroin habit keeps them moving from one squalid hotel room to the next and reeling from countless failed money making schemes.

Instead of being angry, rebellious or sad, Baby is a champion of adaptability. Self-pity is displaced by her sense of curiosity and adventure, and the attitude that hope always needs to come from within.

When the Canadian government sends Jules to rehab for the first time, Baby is taken to a foster care facility with five other children. This is the closest that many of them have ever come to a stable family. They embrace each other’s eccentricities and take great pleasure in delivering day-old pastries, taking a trip to the zoo and wearing backstage passes to each other’s rooms.

Later, when Jules comes to pick her up, Baby can tell that he’s been using. After they leave, she misses the camaraderie that she experienced with her foster family. Deemed a high-risk case from the start, Jules spent his detox months without shoes (to keep him from meeting dealers) but still found ways to score drugs. Baby muses that you get “very religious about parents in a foster home. They seem as fragile as a glass horse on a shelf.”

Their shaky reunion marks a crucial turning point in the story. Jules views Baby’s healthy appearance as a sign that she can handle herself and that, no matter what he does, everything will turn out fine. Despite monthly visits from a social worker, Jules buys a gun, steals everything he can get his hands on, and gets high as often as possible. He is back in custody in a matter of weeks.

Sent to a school for troubled kids and taken in by a neighbor, Baby loses her innocence. Bored and lonely she roams back alleys and seedy parks, making friends with dealers, delinquents and pimps. Her first high is followed quickly by the turning of her first trick, and Baby is instantly the most popular “kid” on the block.

Surprisingly, the story does not become wholly dark and tragic. Apart from her life on the street, Baby falls in love with a schoolmate who calls her the “prettiest girl in the whole world.” Baby’s street friends think that she’s tough and hard, but she knows that there is a part of her that is “smart and original and nerdy too.”

Heather O’Neill delivers a meaningful and beautiful story in a voice that is fresh and poignant, without ever losing her sense of humor and wonderment. Lullabies for Little Criminals marks the triumphant debut of a fantastic new talent in storytelling.