This award-winning,* coming-of-age memoir examines the pain of self-betrayal and the triumph of self-discovery. It’s the story of my tumultuous teens set in the Chicago suburbs during the sexual revolution of the late 1960s/early ’70s. As a fourteen-year-old looking for love in all the wrong places, I have two affairs with men in their mid-twenties over a period of two years, only to become disillusioned by the peace and love they profess. Winding up homeless at age sixteen in San Francisco, and trafficked by someone I thought was a friend, I come face-to-face with this question: How could I have abandoned myself so thoroughly?
Through it all, playing flute eases my soul. Whether improvising melodies in my darkened bedroom, commune farmyard or stone-tiled apartment vestibule with great reverberation, music reveals there is goodness yet within me.
Returning home, only to be abandoned by my mother who moves out East, I stay behind and finish high school, determined to become a professional flutist. At age eighteen I meet Joyce, a mother of six. Her unconditional love and mentorship, combined with my newfound dedication to classical music training, help me to regain a sense of self-worth. I finally learn what it means to take a stand for oneself, to create personal boundaries, to say no to others, and yes to me.
A Minor, Unaccompanied will appeal to readers appalled by the under-age grooming in Alisson Wood’s Being Lolita (2020) and uplifted by the healing effects of music and triumph of spirit in Richard Antoine White’s I’m Possible: a story of survival, a tuba, and the small miracle of a big dream (2021).
*2022 Coming-of-Age Memoir Magazine Prize for Books
Partial or full manuscript available to literary agents upon request.
Bio
As a freelance writer, former magazine editor, and current producer of syndicated radio programs Radio Health Journal and Viewpoints, I have over 700 by-lines. My work is in Newsweek, The Sun and numerous literary journals, including excerpts of my memoir. I was also a 2023 Doris Betts Fiction Prize finalist. I live in Asheville, North Carolina, with my husband of forty-plus years, and two black dogs often mistaken for small black bears on leashes. To contact me click here, or see the contact tab in the menu.
