Description
When Jesse's family moves to
Roanoke, Virginia, in the summer of 1972, she's 12 years old and already
mindful of the schism between innocence and femininity, the gap between
childhood and the adult world. Her father, a former pastor, cycles
through spiritual disciplines as quickly as he cycles through jobs. Her
mother is dissatisfied, glumly fetishizing the Kennedys and anyone else
that symbolizes status and wealth. The residents of the Bent Tree
housing development may not hold what Jesse is looking for, but they're
all she's got. Her neighbor speaks of her married lover; her classmate
playacts being a Bunny at Hugh Hefner's Playboy Club; the boy she's
interested in fantasizes about moving to Hollywood and befriending David
Soul. In the midst of it all, Jesse finds space to set up her room with
her secret treasures: busts of Emily Dickinson and Shakespeare, a Venus
flytrap, her Cher 45s, and "The Big Book of Burial Rites," which she
reads obsessively. But outside awaits all the misleading sexual mores,
muddled social customs, and confused spirituality. Girlhood has never
been more fraught than in Jesse's telling, its expectations threatening
to turn at any point into delicious risk, or real danger.
Darcey
Steinke is the author of four novels, two of which were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Her novel Suicide Blonde has been
translated into eight languages, and her novel Milk has been
translated into four. Her nonfiction has been featured in Vogue, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Village Voice, Spin,
the Boston Review, and the New York Times Magazine, She currently
teaches at both Columbia University and New School University in New
York City. She lives with her daughter in Brooklyn.

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