Girl Stolen

The main character in Girl, Stolen is Cheyenne Wilder, a wealthy sixteen-year-old. Cheyenne’s father is the CEO of Nike; her mother was killed three years previously in the same accident that cost Cheyenne her sight. As the novel opens, Cheyenne is sick with pneumonia. Her stepmother drives her to the pharmacist, leaving Cheyenne in the car to rest while she goes inside to buy medicine. Cheyenne decides to lay down in the back seat to rest.

 

Griffin, a young man who is about Cheyenne’s age, sees the idling vehicle and steals it, not knowing there is someone inside. He intends to take the car to his father, Roy, a career criminal who runs a chop shop and deals in stolen vehicles. When Cheyenne wakes up, she realizes that it isn’t her stepmother driving the car.

 

Griffin doesn’t have any desire to hurt Cheyenne, and when he realizes that she is blind, he contemplates letting her out of the car since she cannot identify him. However, he is afraid of his father’s vicious temper, which prompts him to take Cheyenne home with him. Things get worse for Cheyenne when Roy, recognizing her as the daughter of a wealthy CEO, decides to extract a ransom from her family.

 

Roy calls his partners in crime, TJ and Jimbo, both of whom have sinister intentions for Cheyenne. However, Cheyenne is determined not to be a passive victim. While she is tied up in Griffin’s room, she makes several attempts to escape, and also makes mental notes on anything she notices that she thinks can be used to identify her captors. When all her attempts to get away fail, she turns to Griffin for help.

 

Griffin is a high school drop-out who has been raised by his abusive father since his mother abandoned them. Generally a good-hearted person, he doesn’t want Cheyenne to be hurt. Griffin helps Cheyenne by bringing her food and water, as well as medicine for her pneumonia, until Roy catches him in the act. He gets in trouble and Roy severely punishes him. Without Griffin’s help, Cheyenne’s pneumonia gets worse and she weakens quickly. Griffin keeps her company, and Cheyenne tells him about the accident that claimed her mother’s life and took her sight.

 

Cheyenne comes to understand that Roy and his partners have no intention of letting her go, and will probably kill her rather than return her after they get the ransom. Griffin overhears his father saying as much, but he doesn’t share the information with Cheyenne for fear of worrying her. Instead, he decides that he has to help her escape.

 

However, when he goes upstairs to let Cheyenne go, she enacts her own escape plan. Clubbing Griffin over the head, Cheyenne makes a break for it and escapes. She flees into the woods behind Roy’s home, quickly realizing that there are no other people around to help her. To make matters worse, it begins to snow.

 

Cheyenne is soon hopelessly lost, but then Griffin catches up with her. Griffin assures her that he wants to help her escape, but they have to hurry because Roy is not far behind. He begins to head toward the highway with Cheyenne, but steps into a hole under the snow and breaks his ankle. Unable to walk at all, Griffin points Cheyenne towards the road.

 

Eventually, Cheyenne navigates the woods. She comes out near the highway and is picked up by a car. The man in the vehicle tells her that he is a police officer, and Cheyenne gets in with him. However, she soon realizes that the driver is not with the police. It is Roy, who fooled her by disguising his voice.

 

Cheyenne tricks Roy into getting out of the car. Once he does, she locks him out and gets behind the wheel. She manages to drive a little, with Roy outside trying to break the window. Cheyenne finds a cell phone in the car and calls the police. Officers arrive soon after and rescue Cheyenne. They also find Griffin in the woods and rescue him from TJ and Jimbo who had been contemplating killing him.