A DOOR NEAR HERE, by Heather Quarles, Dell Laurel-Leaf, New York, 1998, paperback, 231 pages, $4.50.

If there is one book that I wish I could place in the hands of every teacher, social worker, police officer, doctor and professional who works with young people, it’s Heather Quarles’ “A Door Near Here.”

It’s an excellent young adult novel and so much more. Like Mildred Taylor’s “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry,” it draws the reader under the skin of its resilient heroine to experience her world through her heart, soul and mind. When I put that book down, I felt exhausted yet exhilarated as though I had just run a marathon.

As the story opens, Katherine, 15, is having a tough morning. She’s trying to study for a test while she makes school lunches for herself and three younger siblings. Douglas, 14, who has assured her he’ll fix a leaky pipe before school, is still under the sink in his pajamas, with the school bus due any minute. Alisa, 8, has no clean clothes to wear. Katherine worries about what will happen if the school calls to find out what’s wrong.

Things quickly go from bad to worse. The broken pipe unleashes a flood of filthy water. None of the children know where the main valve is to shut it off. Their mother, an alcoholic who has refused to leave her bed for five weeks, is clueless and pathetic.

But Katherine’s worst shock arrives on deceptively innocent-looking Kermit the Frog stationery. Alisa has asked her to proofread her letter to C.S. Lewis. In the letter, she has asked where the door to Narnia is. Her mother is sick and she needs to get help. Katherine is saddened to learn that Alisa, while not knowing the exact nature of her mother’s ailment, is aware that something is very wrong.

And that’s just the first two chapters. As it becomes increasingly clear that their mother won’t get better in the near future, Katherine must rally Douglas and Tracey, 13, to survive as a family.

Crises spring up in all directions. Money for food is dangerously short. Alisa’s grasp on reality is becoming very tenuous. Electricity is turned off when the bill is unpaid. And in a particularly tense scene, Katherine must get her mother, hurt in a fall, to the hospital and protect her from being committed once her injuries are attended to.

Even as their world is falling apart, the three older siblings must present to the outside world the illusion that all is fine in their home. If someone learns the truth, their family may be torn apart.

Quarles — now Erikson by marriage and living in Gloucester, Mass. — gained inspiration for her first novel during five summers when she worked at a camp in Ocean Park, Maine. For some of the teens there, the camp was a temporary substitute home. The experiences of youngsters taken from abusive or negligent parents into foster care or the custody of friends or extended family members made a lasting impression on her.

Quarles was struck by the loyalty of the children to even the most painfully dysfunctional of households.

“Even when home is not a healthy place it’s still their family,” she said during an interview. “They have a strong instinct to protect their family, to hold everything together.”

Hope enters the book through a caring teacher. Quarles created him to serve as a beacon of hope for real-life children in abusive or negligent families. “A kid’s world can be so small. It can seem like there’s no one worth trusting.”

Quarles advises us to listen to children as individuals and really pay attention. “It’s so easy to make false assumptions that these are the best years of their lives, that they have no worries.”

Quarles is working on a second novel. I can’t wait to see what she has in mind.