"I don't do drugs, she [Liz] thought. So I've got to be going crazy." Liz carries a great deal of pernicious psychological baggage, but she is a smart youngster who has been wise enough to avoid using drugs.

Even so, it seems that people who meet her think she does. In fact, from her parents to her aunt, she is regarded as a bad kid, and she has encouraged this view with her sarcastic attitude. Her problems with self-image are laid on perhaps too thick in "Wooden Bones," but the fiddler cuts close to a truth for many young people when he notes that "Everybody saying that she was no good until she began to believe if herself, until she wore the part and made it true." It is heartening that "Wooden Bones" cuts to the heart of an emotional issue that many young adults endure...