Chapter 1 Excerpt

I was so angry with Mother! I stormed down the prairie trail, flip-flops slapping my heels. Walking the mown path through the fifty-acre prairie was the only way to cool my head. Hell hath no fury like a pissed-off thirteen-year-old girl, especially a late bloomer, impatient for her body’s transformation. I was pigtailed, knobby-kneed, and flat-chested, thirteen, but physically more like ten. Retreating to the woods was an act of rebellion. My mother had forbidden me to go there at night, so I could hardly wait to get through the prairie and reach the dark and leafy trails. The sun was dropping behind the trees, and the cicadas rattled like electric maracas. More...

Chapter 2 Excerpt
Where I was raised is the first, most important thing to know about me, more important than knowing why Deirdre angered me so, or that my name is Penny, which I despised (but grew to love). Where I grew up explains why I’ve had such a checkered career with both men and jobs. I grew up in an unreal place, a house not of horrors, but of magic, my mother’s bed and breakfast in Prairie Bluff, Illinois. But before I recount that summer when my estrangement from Mother peaked, the summer of 1974, when the first U.S. president resigned from office, I must emphasize that my younger years were happy. I grew up in a large, lovely home with acres of land to roam, with kittens and gardens and a bedroom of my own with pale pink walls. More ...