To Take a Dare by Crescent Dragonwagon

First published: 1982

Subjects: Coming-of-age, family, jobs and work, and sexual issues

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Domestic realism and social realism

Time of work: The 1980’s

Recommended Ages: 13-18

Locale: The small town of Excelsior Springs, Arkansas

Principal Characters:

• Chrysta Perretti, a teenage runaway from Chicago trying to make a new life for herself in a small Arkansas town
• Luke Beauford, a college student and the assistant kitchen manager at the General’s Palace Hotel
• Dare Wilkie, an abandoned twelve-year-old whom Chrysta takes in to live with her
• Lissa Danforth, another runaway who becomes Chrysta’s best friend
• Nettie Carlisle, Luke’s aunt, a cook at the General’s Palace Hotel
• Hugh Dewling, the owner of the General’s Palace Hotel
• Howie Snoodgrass, the kitchen manager at the General’s Palace Hotel, who sexually harasses Chrysta
• Mr. Perretti, and
• Mrs. Perretti, Chrysta’s parents

Form and Content

To Take a Dare is the disturbing yet inspiring story of a young girl who runs away from home at the age of thirteen. Chrysta is a bookish and an only child; her mother eats obsessively and will not leave the house, and her father refuses to address the situation, maintaining the family in an uneasy coexistence. Chrysta endures her strange home life until she suddenly undergoes a rapid physical development and appears to be much older and more sexually mature than her thirteen years. Unable to deal with Chrysta’s development, Mr. Perretti withdraws even further from the family. Alone and confused, Chrysta falls in with a crowd that experiments with drugs, alcohol, and sex. When her father finds out that Chrysta has contracted gonorrhea, his hatred and anger become so intolerable that Chrysta finally runs away.

After spending a few years on the road, Chrysta decides to settle down in a small Arkansas town and make a new start in life. Although she is still an underage runaway, she easily passes as a young woman in her twenties and gets a job as a cook at the General Palace’s Hotel in Excelsior Springs, Arkansas. At first, Chrysta simply works and keeps to herself, but as she gets to know the town’s kind inhabitants, Excelsior Springs begins to feel like home.

Many people come into Chrysta’s life, and all have a profound effect on her. She meets a twelve-year-old boy named Dare Wilkie whose father has essentially abandoned him, leaving him in the care of various acquaintances. When Chrysta discovers that Dare has been sneaking into a local school to sleep at night, she decides to take him in, recognizing that he is at a turning point similar to that which Chrysta experienced herself. Chrysta also meets Luke Beauford and Nettie Carlisle, who also work in the restaurant kitchen; Luke is a college student, and Nettie is the aunt who reared him when his parents died in a car accident. Although Chrysta initially dislikes Luke because his quiet seriousness is so foreign to her, they eventually fall in love, and Chrysta is able to share her past with him. She earns a job promotion and eventually even decides to try to make peace with her parents. The ending, however, is not entirely happy; Dare becomes hostile toward Chrysta, and she realizes she is powerless to help him.

Written from Chrysta’s first-person perspective, To Take a Dare is a particularly warm and personal story. At Luke’s urging, Chrysta writes down her experiences so that she can come to understand how she has developed from a rebellious runaway into a mature young adult capable of holding down a job with considerable responsibility. The story is told in retrospect, with occasional present-tense passages in which Chrysta expresses the pain of reliving her past through her writing. Although the book is not illustrated, a distinctive touch is added in the form of a postcard and a letter that are typeset to appear as though they were handwritten.

Critical Context

To Take a Dare is a frank, honest examination of circumstances that can lead a teenager to run away from home. Chrysta, Dare, and Lissa have all suffered parental abuse of some form, whether physical, emotional, or mental, yet they all deal with their problems in different ways. When first published, this novel was one of a growing number of works that attempted to address serious issues, some of which had been considered “inappropriate” for young readers, instead of merely trying to entertain. It is similar in content to Norma Klein’s novels, particularly It’s OK If You Don’t Love Me (1978), which portrays teenagers as sexual beings, struggling with their new identities while dealing with divorce and their parents’ own insecurities.

Although Crescent Dragonwagon had published several children’s picture books, this was her first young adult novel. Paul Zindel, on the other hand, had written many young adult novels dealing with subjects such as teenage pregnancy and parental pressure to succeed. Although these books are also well written, the added talents of Dragonwagon give To Take a Dare a somewhat softer style and more sympathetic characters. In addition, by writing from her own surroundings in a small town in the Ozarks of Arkansas, Dragonwagon has created a vivid and memorable setting for this novel.