Author Description

Caution: contains strong sexual and strong language themes. The novel is set in the present, in the most mountainous area of West Virginia, one of the places in the USA that has seen a steady decline in its population during the past thirty years due to economic reversals.For the isolated locality to survive, a "live and let live" understanding exists. Everyone is aware of the highly unconventional pasts of both Kim and Trish, her mother. Thanks to Trish's hedonistic and promiscuous teenage life, town folklore asserts that any of seven males might be Kim's father. When Trish brought five-year-old Kim out of the mountains into town to live she shot the hat off the Deputy Sherriff's head, illustrating the private intense enmity between them. Her and Kim's total disregard for what the community thought of them affronted the more moral, whilst their method of always telling the truth-albeit in factually accurate but convoluted terms- sowed confusion.Kim grew up with such a unique view of life that people half-jokingly said she lives in a parallel universe, explaining that there had never been anything normal in her life "so normal doesn't apply". The novel begins when Kim, now nineteen, returns to her mother and stepfather with her son, fleeing from her latest calamity. Kim has not changed in the intervening years. Iron-willed, reckless, and daring, she can also be compassionate, walking in and sitting naked with a Marine buddy in a motel bedroom, calming him by discussing life's preciousness whilst showing him her stretch-marks, so he will hand her the gun he intends to use on his partner and himself. Wild and belligerent, she smashes a pot of scalding coffee into the face of the most dangerous and feared man in town, because he put his hand up her waitress's skirt.Her surprise return will divide the town, directly lead to two vigilante executions, a vicious rape, an attempted murder, and a suicide. You will learn what almost everyone believes to be the shocking truth