What does the average twelve-year old girl know about cars, grease, or making a quick buck? Absolutely nothing. But with a little memorization of car jargon and a huge dose of bravado, this girl became a master of a rusting world. 

 

Junkyard Princess is a coming-of-age memoirella by Robyn Saunders Wilson about working in her father’s junkyard during the 1980s, where she learned about love, mullets, teenage runaways, and the occasional junkyard dog. 

 

Robyn’s story recounts her displacement from the safe confines of Orange County, California, to her father’s new empire in the middle of the California High Desert. At first, the new business is a lark, but eventually she’s drawn in to service hawking auto parts amidst a motley assortment of fugitives and refugees. Too young to know better, she somehow misses that the people around her may be slightly dangerous—they were, after all, recently released from prison or on the run from their countries under mysterious circumstances. And when the rise of meth use takes hold of the area, a new flicker of danger threatens to strike its match on the Saunders’ junkyard kingdom.  

 

The years continue and she becomes better at selling things she knows nothing about. So good that her parents leave her to run the show while they take vacations. Left without any real role models and lost among kids her own age, Robyn fakes her way through her teen years by mimicking the only adults she knows: soap opera stars and characters plucked from Danielle Steel romance novels. Through this pretense she is able to shapeshift while keeping her true identiy—a shy, naive child—under lock and key. 

 

All empires must collapse and all little girls must grow up. But first, there is love to be found, music to discover, and womanhood to shirk from. Junkyard Princess explores familial bonds and inherited histories, empty gas tanks, and that sweet spot of redemption that only comes from a life of observing and choosing differently.