Find Layla
by Meg Elison
Reviewed by Galen Strickland
Posted November 10, 2026
Out of print, but Bookshop has listings of used copies from third-party sellers, but they don't offer the e-book. Amazon apparently has some paperbacks warehoused, plus they have it for Kindle. A purchase through our links may earn us a commission. Bookfinder.com shows several listings on eBay, plus from other outlets, and my library has a few copies, so it is available if you're interested.
In the interview Meg did with Terry Bisson for her Outspoken Authors book Big Girl, she said this was the most personal story she has ever written. It is a fictional novel though, not a memoir, so I assume several things might be slightly different than Meg experienced herself. Hopefully so, because what Layla had to deal with was unconscionable. Meg has said she essentially divorced herself from her family when she dropped out of high school, due to neglectful abuse, and living in poverty for several years. In this book, Layla Bailey is fourteen years old, a middle school student in Anaheim, California. She, her mother, and younger brother Andy, who is six, had lived in four different apartments since moving to SoCal, always having to move due to non-payment of rent or utilities, leaving without notice. Not sure how she managed being accepted somewhere else with that type of history. Layla is surprised they have been in the current one four years. That means she had been able to attend the same schools for that long. If only that had made things easier for her, but that was not to be. She barely remembered her father, who was in the Army and usually far away from his family, eventually abandoning them. Her mother was the manager of the apartment complex where they lived, but obviously as neglectful of her duties there as she was of taking care of her children. I do not mean this in any eugenics sort of way, but it is obvious there are people who should never have been parents.
I won't go into many details, but I also won't sugar coat it. This is a very bleak and depressing story, and yet a meaningful one. As much as Layla had working against her, she was a very intelligent girl, an avid reader, with science being her main interest. Layla narrates the story, frequently interjecting the latin names for plants, animals, insects, sometimes not being sure the name is correct, but at least she is trying. Amazingly, her grades have been excellent, her homework or extra assignments always on time. Even when she watched television it was often shows or movies that featured women scientists; Contact, Madame Curie, Jurassic Park, The X-Files, Gorillas in the Mist, etc. She also mentions Jane Goodall several times. One perk her mother mentioned about being the apartment manager was being able to claim things tenants had left behind, and Layla's best find was a TV/VCR combo, plus she had been able to get cheap VHS tapes, probably old rental copies, or maybe at pawn shops or yard sales. I hesitate to mention the conditions inside their apartment because they are almost unbelievable, especially because her mother should have been able to get maintenance people to help. But one disaster after another led her mother to continually say they had to deal with it themselves, and until they could manage that, no one else was to be allowed inside. Layla was finally able to deal with those conditions due to a science class project, which was to film and document a specific biome in the vicinity. Her partner, her best (only) friend Kristi, wanted to film a patch of vegetation in the median of the freeway. Instead, Kayla filmed inside her apartment.
Even before submitting the video to the class, she is able to upload it to the internet, thanks to Kristi's computer and her newly created Twitter account. The video goes viral, hundreds, then thousands of views, and that occurred about the same time CPS came looking for her and Andy because of something that had happened to Andy at school, and her mother could not be reached by the authorities. Men in hazmat suits came to the aparment to clean it up, so the video is the only evidence of the situation. Kayla runs away, her main interest is finding Andy who has been placed in a foster home. Other than Kristi, practically every other student had continually made fun of Kayla, mostly because of her old, ragged clothing, and general unkempt appearance. Her main nemesis, the reigning mean girl, accuses Kayla of faking the video. Kayla eventually is placed in a foster home too, but that is very temporary, only a couple of days, then moved to a group home. At least she has been able to see Andy for short visits, and her group home is in the same school district, so she returns to school. From the time of the video to that point was only about a week, but Kayla already feels much, much older. A couple of her thoughts keep her motivated; "There is no being done." She would always face a struggle to avoid falling back into her previous, miserable existence. But at least she knows, "I came from nowhere, but I know where I'm going."
Hard to recommend a book as dark as this, but it highlights the plight of many children of neglectful, abusive, or absent parents. There is a judicial and legal system in place to deal with them, but those do not always work in the most efficient and beneficial ways as intended. Everyone should be more observent of others, mindful of signs of neglect, of possible psychological problems. Meg was able to rise above her situation. Even after dropping out of school she managed to attend college, graduating from UC Berkeley. She will probably never write more about Layla, but I'll still be thinking of her, hoping she found her way to a brighter future too.
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