AMERICAN SPIRITS, sapphic suds with a side of sly social commentary

AMERICAN SPIRITS
ANNA DORN
Simon & Schuster (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A love letter to pop music, American Spirits charts an icon’s fall—and an obsessive fangirl’s rise.

Thirty-eight-year-old Blue Velour has finally achieved the critical acclaim she’s long been chasing. Over the last decade, she’s released six studio albums to mixed reviews, landing her somewhere between performance artist and niche legend. But her latest album, Blue’s Beard—a cheeky reference to the subreddit fanatically dedicated to her suspected secret relationship with longtime producer Sasha Harlow—has rocket-launched her reputation. Blue hires nerdy superfan Rose Lutz as her assistant to handle the pressures of the upcoming tour.

When the pandemic shuts down the tour, however, Blue decides to hole up in the redwoods with Sasha to make another album. An aspiring singer herself, Rose is frothing at the mouth to be isolated in a cabin with these two legends, but what begins as a creative retreat spirals into a flurry of chaos and betrayal—culminating in a tragic act that changes their lives forever.

Smart, entertaining, and edgy, American Spirits is a compelling exploration of the dark side of fame.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A Star is Born with Lana del Rey as Norman Maine. Let that sink in.

So I was pretty invested early on, I like the idea of a lesbian A Star is Born more than you can probably imagine, and from Author Dorn's very, very capable pen...! Home run ball, meet bat, amirite? Well, I was right. Just...not all the way to the fences for that ball.

I don't see much point in going over the plot, it's accurately summarized in the publisher's synopsis. The flavor of the book is more what I rate this author's work on. I enjoy the line-by-line reading of Author Dorn's work so much, f/ex Blue Velour's description of Ayn Rand as "the original girl boss", that I was carried along on a satisfied cloud of smiles as I absorbed her digs and jabs at the culture of Fame, its corrosive loss of perspective for the famous and the fans, the careful but there delineation of the societal systems that Fame depends on and reinforces as toxic and harmful. I was set to give this story a rave review.

Then came The Twist℠.

The observant among you will note the rating above. That is how much I disliked, and always dislike, this framing device as revealed near the end of the book. No I will not discuss details, no one dares do such a thing while the Spoiler Stasi lurk among us. It is a framing device that is completely ordinary, does not cause others the anger it evokes from me, and will bother very few, if any, of y'all. It's my quirk. I write reviews of books because sometimes someone discovers a new writer when I gush (or excoriate, I know of one case where someone read my line "...I, a charter member of the “Eradicate Ivy Compton-Burnett” Society" in a two-star review and found her newest reading passion), and to help people on the bubble about picking up a new book to gather information about it, and to vent my feelings about writers and writing. I've written a lot of reviews...there are over 2,000 posts on this blog alone...so the reader can get a bead on my personal taste. It's good to know your source's biases. So if you feel I'm being unfair to Author Dorn by not rating this particular book in line with the majority of the story's genuine excellence, understand that my opinion of her writing talent and expertise is as strong as ever...I simply do not like at all the particular twist she, in her authorial capacity, chose to use in this story.

It's not meant to discourage potential readers seeking sapphic melodrama, fame-culture takedowns, or the sheer pleasure of reading her prose, from getting the book. If you've been thinking about Perfume & Pain and wondering when the next dose is going to soothe your craving, don't drop it...just maybe borrow this one from the library first. You might adore what bothers me, and want a copy to keep on your shelves.

I can very much see this reaction. In fact, I hope you feel that way because I want Author Dorn's next book as soon as Simon & Schuster can get it out.

YOUR LOVE IS NOT GOOD, exploring queer desire's darker corners

YOUR LOVE IS NOT GOOD
JOHANNA HEDVA
And Other Stories (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$18.95 trade paper, available 15 April 2025

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Finalist for the 2024 Republic of Consciousness Prize
An artist of color becomes obsessed with a white model in a novel with the glamour of Clarice Lispector and the viscerality of Han Kang.

At an otherwise forgettable party in Los Angeles, a queer Korean American painter spots a woman who instantly controls the room: gorgeous and distant and utterly white, the center of everyone’s attention. Haunted into adulthood by her Korean father’s abandonment of his family, as well as the specter of her beguiling, abusive white mother, the painter finds herself caught in a perfect trap. She wants Hanne, or wants to be her, or to sully her, or destroy her, or consume her, or some confusion of all the above. Since she’s an artist, she will use art to get closer to Hanne, beginning a series of paintings with her new muse as model. As for Hanne, what does she want? Her whiteness seems sometimes as cruel as a new sheet of paper.

When the paintings of Hanne become a hit, resulting in the artist’s first sold-out show, she resolves to bring her new muse with her to Berlin, to continue their work, and her seduction. But, just when the painter is on the verge of her long sought-after breakthrough, a petition started by a Black performance artist begins making the rounds in the art community, calling for the boycott of major museums and art galleries for their imperialist and racist practices.

Torn between her desire to support the petition, to be a success, and to possess Hanne, the painter and her reality become more unstable and disorienting, unwilling to cut loose any one of her warring ambitions, yet unable to accommodate them all. Is it any wonder so many artists self-destruct so spectacularly? Is it perhaps just a bit exciting to think she could too?

Your Love Is Not Good stuffs queer explosive into the cracks between identity and aspiration, between desire and art, and revels in the raining debris.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: The way I know queer folk are, for want of a more accurate and inclusive term, assimilated into the Borg Collective straight peoples' overcultural awareness as real, fully human people is the virulence of the Gawd Squad's attacks on our rights, and our young people (by which I mean everyone born from 1984 on) feel it's okay to write about messed-up, creepy, mean, or even evil queer people. In other words, people. Just plain ol' humans. No need to fancy it up with initialisms that help us find each other but become tiger traps of ghettoization over time.

Here's a novel about a mixed-"race" (a term I hate with all my passion mobilizable...we are all humans none of us are neanderthals or antecessors!!) lesbian at the ragged edge of youth shading into middle age finding out how easy it is to fall into obsessive love when your hypercapitalist life starts to spontaneously deconstruct under the weight of expectation. Becoming fixated on someone like you see yourself being, only moreso, someone refined, and just...better...is justifiable to others and yourownself when the object is from the group at the pinnacle of society's desire hierarchy.

The object is then defined by the terrible, reductive term "muse," one definition of which that I think is relevant here is: A muse represents more than a mere subject or source of inspiration; it embodies the very essence of creative energy and inspiration itself. The muse possesses a unique allure that captivates the artist’s senses, provoking emotions, ideas, and a deep connection that fuels their artistic expression. It is not limited to a passive role but actively participates in the artistic process. They stimulate the artist’s vision, evoking a profound response and encouraging the exploration of new artistic territories. And Hanne, the white woman in her current, sold-out (!) painting series, is not her first "muse" nor her first racialized lust object.

In many ways, our unnamed narrator...called "Johanna" as a proxy for the author, but still explicitly stated not to be the author, so not named...painting Hanne (note how similar the beauteous muse's name is to the author's) for a highly prestigious gallery show is falling into the ugly territory that dogged Nabokov when he wrote the bitter, angry, utterly misunderstood Lolita. Inspired by the conventional white-woman prettiness of Hanne, so distinct from the narrator's own constructed "mixed" identity, she's creating beautiful artworks that are (she tells herself) critical of and interrogating the primacy of whiteness in the construction of a concept of beauty.

The art collectors and institutions who will see the show, however, will most likely buy them because she's painting a pretty picture of a pretty woman whose skin is white.

The deep-seated inner conflict between her Korean father's immigrant economic striving and Asianness and her white artist-mother's centrality to everything she's desired to become as well as escape is brought to crisis point when a Black friend issues a manifesto, calling on artists of color to boycott the white-centered art/beauty industry. If she ignores the call, she's made implacable enemies out of longtime friends, but most likely saved her school-debt-ridden, broke-ass economic life. Getting down to the nitty-gritty of this particular story, however, for all the complex and fascinating issues it raises and grapples with, is a simple sentence fragment: "...it takes hours to paint a portrait, and this is who I wanted to spend hours looking at."

There it is. Has the narrator burned out her exoticizing fascination with the women of color who served as muses before Hanne, or is this loudly, argumentatively toxic assumption of control that is the relegation of a person to the role of "a muse" a form of revenge on whiteness like the paintings are? Or, and this seems likely to be true to me, is the artist painting Hanne finally giving in to hypercapitalism's siren song of money, approval, and fame?

Are any of these untrue, or mutually exclusive? Not in my eyes. They're all likely to form part of the mosaic (another word related to the original Muses) of the core truth of this dark, brave narrative. Queer desire is as murky and incomprehensible as all desire is; made up of dark and angry stuff, bright and uplifting stuff, all rolled into the minds of the lovers...though all too seldom examined, or shared, or even acknowledged. Hanne feels the muse's rage and outrage at being Othered; the narrator the desperation of feeling intensely an unshared emotion.

It ends, as great and passionate loves must, in tears and bitterness.

This is exactly why I loved it as much as I did. The prose earns four and a half stars for economy of imagery, just enough not too much. The messy, angry queer desire slipped that extra half-point on for the full five.

GIRLS WHO LIE TOGETHER, exactly what it says on the tin

GIRLS WHO LIE TOGETHER
JESSA RUSSO
Kindle Freebie
$0!

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Easy summers lead to hard falls in this Grease meets Mean Girls contemporary romance…

When seventeen-year-old Renata Carpenter hijacked her stepdad’s classic car, she hadn’t planned on totaling it and landing her best friend in a cast from hip to heel. She definitely hadn’t planned on being sent to a work program in New Orleans as punishment. And she certainly hadn’t planned on falling in love.

But Ren’s summer of forced manual labor has a bright side: her name is Brit, and she’s everything Ren never knew she needed. First love becomes first heartbreak when their summer romance comes to a crashing close earlier than anticipated. Adding insult to injury, Ren’s break-up with Brit is followed by a big move to a small town.

As if starting senior year completely alone isn’t bad enough, Ren soon discovers that the Hell on Heels mean girl who rules Sun Ridge Prep with an iron fist and a vicious tongue is none other than her first love. Too bad this Brit is far from lovable.

But Ren knows the girl beneath the façade, and she refuses to give up on rekindling their relationship. Secretly, the girls pick up where they left off, falling deeper in love and risking it all to be together. But when their affair is exposed by Brit’s boyfriend, Ren and Brit are faced with the ultimate choice: love or acceptance.

Because they certainly can’t have both.

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK AS A PROMOTION. THANKS!

My Review: The author markets this as a YA title. I disagree. I'd hesitate before I gave it ti a sixteen-year-old, or a naïve seventeen-year-old. So let's say it's more a New Adult title.

It's definitely on the money with the Mean Girls comparison. Ren is a classic Mean Girl. She's also a very horny character, and no respecter of boundaries. Brit: "I'm not gay!" Ren: "Get a load of those tits! Such a sweet pair of [upper]lips!"

Then there's the slur usage. I get reclaiming words, and even use queer myownself these days. That was a nasty one in my youth. But using slurs and only slurs? Not now, not ever. That's reinforcing abuse.

While I thought Brit was toying with Ren's feelings...denying you're gay does NOT absolve you of responsibility for behaving sexually with someone of the same sex...I found Ren deeply dislikable and overbearing. Brit's manipulative. Neither is someone I'd like to spend any more time with.

The main issues above weren't made better by the way the story is structured, with time-gaps that just make the chemistry between these two feel very unlikely for teens to experience. The writing was okay, with flashes of creative interest once in a while. Not a favorite read. Caveat emptor re: sexual content.

CECILIA, sapphic obsessive love and bodily fixation in gorgeous prose

CECILIA
K-MING CHANG
Coffee House Press
$14.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A surreal novella about the intensity and eroticism of girlhood friendships, the ecstasy of desire and disgust, and matriarchal mythmaking.

Seven, who works as a cleaner at a chiropractor’s office, reencounters Cecilia, a woman who has obsessed her since their school days. As the two of them board the same bus—each dubiously claiming not to be following the other—their chance meeting spurs a series of intensely vivid and corporeal memories. In the defamiliarization that follows, the narrator begins to experience queerness itself as an alienation from normative time.

Smart, subversive, and gripping, Cecilia is a winding, misty road trip through bodily transformation, inextricable histories of desire and violence, diaspora, and obsessive love.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: This short read is much more affecting than most its length are. That is a funcrion of K-Ming Chang's bravura performance with English as a weapon:

When I reached up to touch my face, I felt no protrusions, no new bones inflecting my surface, and yet, when Cecilia and I looked at each other, we saw them: beaks mountaining out of our mouths, rooted to the shadows of our jawbones. Beaks shining like the perfect darkness preserved inside a belly.

You are on notice: Pay attention to the words chosen, pay attention to the images described, or this very slightly surreal...in its literal meaning, the meaning of the parts it's made of, "overreal, above real, on top of real"...narrative of two girls discovering love, passion, intense vibrant hypercolored Experience, will simply squash you, split the space where you are and move through it.

An intense experience will be had; your choice of framing for the act of being engaged with this story will determine its positive or negative perception for you. I am resolutely positive about the experience because anyone who can, and will, and does explore the sensation of Obsession to burnout is my idol.

That will trigger very strong and not always positive memories for some readers. Be aware of this fact particularly if you have been, or are being, stalked.

Readers who prefer direct action will not resonate to the Proustian aide-memoire of this novella. The story, as in plot, is spare to the point of threadbare: Old friends with a past connection of unrequited lust, requited love, and sensual obsession, meet at one's place of work, chat, then get on a bus to go home...not together. Just that isn't gonna drag the hoi polloi into this tent, there to be entertained. The story is of the rung-bell resonance of girls loving each other before womanhood imbues loving, intense intimacy with a bodily expression's inevitability. The immensely divisive choice of piss as a focus of fascination, desire, disgust, and connection is definitely going to upset some people. It is, I think, an example of how little female desire is examined in our literary landscape that this choice has occasioned such a response across the spectrum of readers. Women, even sapphically inclined ones, are still called on to present a particular strain of pure, clean, unsullied neutered bodiless Love and not filthy, sweaty, bodily based Lust...that's reserved for intimacy, things done and thought in private. Shame, in other words. In porn, these acts are Done To women as a form of punishment or humiliation. K-Ming Chang's Seven is not humiliated or punished. She's so obsessed that this is an urgently desired act of further possession and imtimacy. There's more than a whiff of body horror to the way bodily processes and even body parts are casually discussed, possessed, and even deployed throughout the read.

The author's choice of making her girls of Chinese descent, living in the US diaspora, is...to my surprise...not foregrounded. I expected it to be more of a focus because so much is made of the author's own ethnicity. It was something I didn't really notice until I'd read the story and was thinking about responses to the author's realier works (eg, Bestiary, Bone House, Gods of Want), where ethnicity is apparently made more of within those stories. Haven't read 'em, can't speak with an informed eye, but this story doesn't make a meal of it as I suspected it might.

I definitely don't think this read is for everyone, but the right reader will be unfazed by childbirth evocations and livers of others as property to be treasured. The right reader will immerse their awareness in the meaty world of loving someone so much that consuming them is desirable, not in the Hannibal Lecter sense I hasten to say. The right reader will give their readerly ears to the very idiosyncratic music of K-Ming Chang's creation.

It's me. I'm the right reader.

UNDER THE UDALA TREES, Nigerian QUILTBAG story of two women building a life

UNDER THE UDALA TREES
CHINELO OKPARANTA
Mariner Books
$16.99 trade paper, available now

WINNER OF THE 28TH Lambda Literary Award—BEST LESBIAN FICTION!

NOW ONLY $1.99 ON KINDLE!

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Inspired by Nigeria's folktales and its war, Under the Udala Trees is a deeply searching, powerful debut about the dangers of living and loving openly.

Ijeoma comes of age as her nation does; born before independence, she is eleven when civil war breaks out in the young republic of Nigeria. Sent away to safety, she meets another displaced child and they, star-crossed, fall in love. They are from different ethnic communities. They are also both girls.

When their love is discovered, Ijeoma learns that she will have to hide this part of herself. But there is a cost to living inside a lie.

As Edwidge Danticat has made personal the legacy of Haiti's political coming of age, Okparanta's Under the Udala Trees uses one woman's lifetime to examine the ways in which Nigerians continue to struggle toward selfhood. Even as their nation contends with and recovers from the effects of war and division, Nigerian lives are also wrecked and lost from taboo and prejudice. This story offers a glimmer of hope — a future where a woman might just be able to shape her life around truth and love.

USE THAT LIBRARY, Y'ALL...AND *ASK* IF THEY DON'T ALREADY HAVE THE BOOK YOU'RE LOOKING FOR!

My Review: First, read this:

It was 1967 when the war barged in and installed itself all over the place.
–and–
Maybe love was some combination of friendship and infatuation. A deeply felt affection accompanied by a certain sort of awe. And by gratitude. And by a desire for a lifetime of togetherness.
–and–
Also, what if Adam and Ever were merely symbols of companionship? And Eve, different from him, woman instead of man, was simply a tool by which God noted that companionship was something you got from a person outside yourself? What if that's all it was? And why not?

Why not indeed...perhaps the most trenchant read of 2021, this one. Nigeria's "cracked down" on Twitter for disrespecting its dictator's trumpian "right" to spread lies with impunity; the plight of my QUILTBAG brothers and sisters is not getting one tiny smidge easier or safer there; and this is the story of two girls, too young by US standards to know anything about sex or sexuality, who fall deeply in love and desire a lifetime of companionship together. It's appalling to many that girls of twelve are having sex, still less with each other. I shake my head when I see the well-intentioned clucking and condemnation. You were thinking about sex at twelve, too, and denying it merely makes you a liar. The war-torn world these children live in merely makes knowledge of the subject fortunate if it's only theoretical and not experiential.

After the Biafran civil war opens up the ghastly wounds inflicted on the several pre-colonial states that now make up Nigeria, Ijeoma has every right to be a bit bemused that her mama is more focused on her daughter's sexuality to the exclusion of all else:

“You'll marry your studies? Marry your books? You already have one degree but you want another. You'll marry your degrees?”
–and–
And now she began muttering to herself. "God , who created you, must have known what He did."
–and–
After a moment I realized that I did know why. The reason was suddenly obvious to me.

I said, “Actually, Mama, yes, I do see why. The men offered up the women because they were cowards and the worst kind of men possible. What kind of men offer up their daughters and wives to be raped in place of themselves?”

Mama stared wide-eyed at me, then, very calmly, she said, “Ijeoma, you’re missing the point.”

“What point?”

“Don’t you see? If the men had offered themselves, it would have been an abomination. They offered up the girls so that things would be as God intended: man and woman instead of man and man. Do you see now?”

A headache was rising in my temples. My heart was racing from bewilderment at what Mama was saying. It was the same thing she had said with the story of Lot. It was as if she were obsessed with this issue of abomination. How could she really believe that that was the lesson to be taken out of this horrible story? What about all the violence and all the rape? Surely she realized that the story was even more complex than just violence and rape. To me, the story didn’t make sense.

There is no hope for someone who thinks their god is so vile and lost to morality that rape of any kind is acceptable; that sex is sinful when it isn't {pick their preferred act}; that religion is anything other than a horrible, cruel con game:

Man and wife, the Bible said. It was a nice thought, but only in the limited way that theoretical things often are.
–and–
There are no miracles these days. Manna will not fall from the sky. Bombs, yes, enough to pierce our hearts, but manna, no.
–and–
I wondered about the Bible as a whole. Maybe the entire thing was just a history of a certain culture, specific to that particular time and place, which made it hard for us now to understand, and which maybe even made it not applicable for us today. Like Exodus. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk. Deuteronomy said it too. But what did it mean? What did it mean back then? Was the boiling of the young goat in its mother’s milk a metaphor for insensitivity, for coldness of heart? Or did it refer to some ancient ritual that nobody performed anymore? But still, there it was in the Bible, open to whatever meaning people decided to give to it.

Once education opens a person's eyes...

All in all, a read of great and timely importance. The plight of the young women is only the beginning of the story we're told, however, so don't think this is a YA navel-gazer. This is both a strength...I don't want to spend an entire book trapped with a teenager or a tween...and a weakness, because the story veers into some well-trodden paths about man = abusive asshole and woman = patient sufferer that I find very insulting to both men and women. Even though Ijeoma does not present herself as a *willing* victim, she does say, “I had become a little like a coffin: I felt a hollowness in me and a rattling at my seams,” and “Suddenly she could see her future in the relationship: a lifetime of feeling like an afterthought.” It isn't as though no one's ever said that before, and honestly if it had been a man saying it I'd've been only a scoche more interested.

That said, though, there's a reason I've given the read four stars out of five. It is a tremendously involving tale, though I frankly don't see how it's related to any folktales...not that I'd know this from having encountered Igbo folktales but rather from the relentless quotidian nature of the story. I was not as fully engaged in the story after Amina disappears from it. But I was always keenly aware of the need for this story, these women's story, to be in the world. I hope you're even now clicking on the non-affiliate Amazon link to get the $2.99 Kindle edition and spend a luxurious weekend's afternoon enjoying it.

COTTONMOUTHS, a GritLit Lesbian take on "Winter's Bone"

COTTONMOUTHS
KELLY J. FORD
Skyhorse Publishing
$22.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.9* of five

The Publisher Says: This was Drear’s Bluff. Nothing bad happened here. People didn’t disappear.

College was supposed to be an escape for Emily Skinner. But after failing out of school, she’s left with no choice but to return to her small hometown in the Ozarks, a place run on gossip and good Christian values.

She’s not alone. Emily’s former best friend—and childhood crush—Jody Monroe is back with a baby. Emily can’t resist the opportunity to reconnect, despite the uncomfortable way things ended between them and her mom’s disapproval of their friendship. When Emily stumbles upon a meth lab on Jody’s property, she realizes just how far they’ve both fallen.

Emily intends to keep her distance from Jody, but when she’s kicked out of her house with no money and nowhere to go, a paying job as Jody’s live-in babysitter is hard to pass up. As they grow closer, Emily glimpses a future for the first time since coming home. She dismisses her worries; the meth is a means to an end. And besides, for Emily, Jody is the real drug.

But when Emily’s role in Jody’s business turns dangerous, her choices reveal grave consequences. As the lies pile up, Emily will learn just how far Jody is willing to go to save her own skin—and how much Emily herself has risked for the love of someone who may never truly love her back.

Echoin*g the work of authors like Daniel Woodrell and Sarah Waters, Cottonmouths is an unflinching story about the ways in which the past pulls us back . . . despite our best efforts to leave it behind.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: You probably went to Sunday school. Your mama and daddy taught you about Right and Wrong and never the twain shall meet and you either rolled your eyes and agreed to shut them up or absorbed it with every spongy fiber of your kid-soul. Most likely some of both.

But that "moral grounding" does el zippo to prepare you for end-stage capitalism's vampirous demands.

It sure as Hell didn't prepare li'l Emily.

Where she was headed, the cast iron skillet had been seasoned before she was born.
Her mom would cook the beans, potatoes, and cornbread the way her own mother had taught her. Dad would recite the Lord’s Prayer because it required no thought. And Emily would stare at her plate of food and let it go cold while pondering the headset and the cash register and the brown and blue uniform in her back seat, whose fibers still held its last tenant’s stench of fryer grease and body odor—items for a life she had not expected to return to when she left for college, for a job that would not have been offered to her at all had she not removed the name of the state university from her resume—though two years hardly called for its inclusion.

Now you name me a worse feeling than being forced, as an adult, to go to the place you're used to calling Home when it's about as much home as that deep-fat fryer you're smellin' right now.

For a Lesbian sister in a christian-values community, this is WORSE than being in so much debt that you can never dig yourself out, right? Hold my beer, says Author Kelly, I am about to make this fryin' pan seem nuclear powered:

Watching her walk away, Emily felt as dirty as if she’d been watching porn. The craving came on like a fever, as if a coal had been stoked within and blurred the edges of reasonable thought. Rather than push it away, she sat on the floor and let the desire consume her.
–and–
Then an ache no bigger than a marble pulsed inside Emily, an ache born in the woods across the creek. An ache that beat on inside her, steady, steadier, growing until her whole body shook.
–but–
That was the worst of it, to be accused but denied the pleasure of what everyone thought.

That is how Emily responds to the sight of Jody, her long-ago never-was one-that-got-away. Everyone...yeah. Lots of Everyone in Drear's Bluff (isn't that a superb distillation of Home, fellow former Southerners?), and man are they a bunch of self-righteous goobers. Nothing new there...that's how most people are. That's how so many can't help but be, given their lack of moral fiber to resist group-think.

Emily's true self, her inner self, is under siege at home, and she's got to get out...Jody, the woman who revs up her nights this decade-plus, has a solution: Come watch my baby for me! Live here, I'll give you some cash, and you're out of the house. Remember that frying pan?

“This is like the worst stereotype of the South come to life. All you need is a Confederate flag over the fucking door.”
–and–
All those wasted moments of guilt and shame and feeling downright wrong about what she’d done in the bed the night Jody left.
–and–
No matter how tempting the offer, she knew that half a life was no life at all.

It's never, ever the same, not after leaving or coming back; the world's moved on, so have your feelings, so has the person you once had the feelings for. You're in for it, though, while the ride lasts; you're not going to get off until the merry-go-round's slung you onto the bouncy-castle at 55mph and you've gone sailing through the air but there's a landing coming...one you don't have any way to cushion, or even prepare for....

Lovers would come and go. Maybe there’d be one who would be unafraid and teach Emily how to be brave, brave enough to wake up next to her, to walk hand in hand. Someone with whom she’d have a nice life, without trouble and with love. But in the twilight hours of her life, when her body and memory failed, this above all others would be the buoy she would cling to, the memory she would repeat and repeat until the darkness ripped her away. Because this moment, so small, the smallest, had seared her heart.

I wish I'd been able to full-five-star the read; the thing that kept me from doing it was a certain soap-opera quality that, while I didn't hate it (I used to watch All My Children, FFS, I'm not immune to the appeal!), I found...wearing. I wanted something that rose above it more often than something planted squarely in it, and that little niggle took the luster off just enough to be noticeable.