Thirteen-year-old Heck is a pretty normal kid with some artistic talent and a hyperactive imagination. Life with his mother has been hand-to-mouth but not catastrophic. He has a modest, passive support system: his best friend and some kindly acquaintances. When he and his mother are evicted, she assumes he's staying with his friend. Heck, confident of his own ability to get by and wanting to protect his mother from criticism, decides not to ask for help. For the next few days he brushes up against a harsher reality than he anticipated. He's hungry, broke, homeless and plagued by a toothache. Heck has a series of encounters involving varying degrees of callousness, harshness, and risk. He sustains himself (and the reader) with his wit, imagination and optimism. As Heck faces the challenges of growing up on the streets — including drugs, pain, hunger, theft and homelessness — he must come to terms with his choices, his perceptions of himself, and his perceptions of others. Heck Superhero is award-winning author Martine Leavitt's second foray into the world of today's urban teenager. Heck is as real as Martine's other troubled teenager, Tom Finder (Red Deer Press, 2003). And, like Tom Finder, Heck must find the inner strength to face the truth.

This riveting story is about a fifteen-yearold boy who, as the story opens, realizes he has no idea who he is-beyond his first name-or what has led to his loss of memory. From the outset, he's on the run, a street kid thrust out on his own, living by his wits and involved in a quest to find another lost teenager whose First Nations father is desperate for news of his son. In the process, he learns to survive and begins to get a sense of his strengths and character.