Two kids, one addicted, one in the foster system

Man, the kids are not "alright." But then wholesome childhoods and healthy living were never the stuff of memoir. Two young-adult autobiographies - Nic Sheff's Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines (Ginee Seo Books; 325 pages; $16.99; ages 14-up) and Ashley Rhodes-Courter's Three Little Words (Atheneum; 312 pages; $17.99; ages 12-up) - render drug addiction and foster care for a young-adult audience, but seldom pull punches. Both young writers do an admirable job of telling their stories clearly and avoid heavy-handed exposition, and the effect is often moving.

"Tweak" is written by Bay Area native Sheff, the son of two journalists. (His father, David Sheff, has his own memoir coming out in late February.) His parents divorced when he was 4, and he grew up in and around San Francisco with his father. Without too many words, Sheff does a good job of setting the scene: privileged in a Northern California artsy way, with semi-famous (never named) family friends floating in and out of the narrative and easy access to good schools. Sheff's addictions seem to come from a place outside reason or logic or any kind of easy explanation; he got drunk for the first time at age 11, smoked pot through high school, dropped out of college to go to rehab, relapsed and never knew how to stop. Meth and heroin become his drugs of choice.

The book opens on Haight Street in San Francisco, at the beginning of an epic bender after Sheff, in his early 20s, had been clean 18 months and was living in Malibu. He is as surprised as anyone that he's standing on a corner, drunk on vodka and stoned on Ambien, trying to score meth: "The morning of my relapse, I had no idea I was actually going to do it," he writes.

He runs into a girl, Lauren, he briefly dated in high school, and they spend the next three weeks or so blowing through Sheff's savings. Eventually, he makes his way back to Los Angeles, cleans up again and then gets into another heap of trouble with an older woman named Zelda.

The trajectory of drug addiction is nothing new, but Sheff's lucid, simple prose makes the heartbreaking journey seem fresh. More than once, adults praise him for his candor - he lies frequently in his constant quest for more money and more drugs, but he also comes clean (so to speak) many times in the process. It's one of his most appealing aspects, and it's a necessary quality to autobiographical writing. One senses that he's not holding much back.

Rhodes-Courter's "Three Little Words" takes a different tone. Her journey from her mother's care to the foster system to adoption began at a young age, so much of the narrative is from the point of view of a little girl rather than a jaded youth.

When Rhodes-Courter was 3, she and her younger brother were separated from their troubled mother, who would go in and out of rehab and jail. In nine years, she went through 14 foster and group homes before being adopted by the Courter family. While she was not abused to the extent of many in the system - none of her foster parents beat or molested her - it's a horrible thing for a child to pingpong from home to home.

One of the most surprising revelations in "Three Little Words" is how the awkward relations between adopted daughter and family fail to live up to the fantasy of the perfect adoption. The book's title alludes not to "I love you" but "I guess so" - what Rhodes-Courter said to a judge on the day of her official adoption.

"It was only a matter of time before this happy-family farce would be over. I looked anywhere but at the judge, hoping there was some way to leave the room without causing a scene. I tuned back in as the judge was complimenting the Courters on their willingness to take me. Then the judge asked me, 'Do you want me to sign the papers and make it official, Ashley?' "

What stands out in this moment is the judge's compliment to the Courters: Even on her adoption day, Ashley is reminded that she is a charity case.

The author does a commendable job of rendering her various caretakers sympathetically - many well-intentioned people made her life harder, but instead of blaming them, she recognizes the larger mechanisms that forced her family apart.

Both young authors have been precociously published - Sheff, now 25, had a Newsweek article about his parents' divorce printed as a teenager, and Rhodes-Courter, now 22, won an essay contest in the New York Times Magazine in 2003. Both say they want to speak to young people who might learn from their experiences. If nothing else, the fact of their existence as published authors offers hope. They are writers with big futures ahead of them.

Ashley Rhodes-Courter went through 14 foster and group homes in nine years.