This award-winning, unpublished memoir, A Minor, Unaccompanied, stitches the healing effects of music in Richard Antoine White’s I’m Possible: a story of survival, a tuba, and the small miracle of a big dream (2021) with grooming in Alisson Wood’s Being Lolita (2020) and youth homelessness in Vicki Sokolik’s If You See Them: Young, Unhoused, and Alone in America (2024).
Overview
A week before my fourteenth birthday, twenty-five-year-old Hugo gives me a novel about a girl who falls in love with an older man. Flattered, and hungry for love and attention, I follow the script for two years. But Hugo ignores me when we’re not having sex. Hoping to reinvent myself, I grab my flute and join a Wisconsin commune only to latch onto another man. We hitchhike to British Columbia where I’m enrolled at a private school, and whereupon he departs. The school turns out to be a scam. Another swindled “student” offers me a ride home to Chicago, but instead, dumps me near San Francisco where I run into a commune member who trafficks me for four nights. Ashamed and broken, I return home, hoping Hugo will love me, but finally see the truth about our relationship.
I’m seventeen when my mother remarries and moves across the country. I refuse to accompany her and stay behind to finish high school, but am devastated. As always, flute playing gives me solace. When I befriend an older woman, she invites me to live with her family. Though I rebel against the abstinence she requires, her friendship and my musical goals light the spark of self-worth within me. I learn that sex is not the most important sign of love–self-esteem is.
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.
