Bernie is a battered wife, escaping her husband Carlos for the summer. Meg is a writer and pre-op transgender woman, dealing with father issues, and sharing her place with Baby, another woman on the edge.
Bernie faces her close-knit family’s disapproval that she’s brought her abuse out into the open by this flagrant, trial summer separation. Meg confronts the issues of her own absent father, who is now terminally ill, and her younger sister’s dark history, which weighs heavier on her than the final stages of her upcoming transition. Bernie’s only champion is Carlos’s cousin Gloria, who offers to help and to visit Bernie in Hollywood, in spite of at first calling all Bernie’s new neighbors freaks.
Relations come in all kinds of configurations–what we accept from some, what we must refuse from others, and how we recognize those who earn the right to be called family.
Rainbow Awards
Winner
2018-2019 Best LGBTA Contemporary General Fiction, Fantasy & Sci-Fi / Futuristic
“Runyon writes characters in a way that makes them believable–flawed, only human. People who find the intricate details of identities and the stories of the people around them fascinating will like this novel.” — Review, Sweatpants & Coffee
GusGus Press
212 pp. ● 5 x 7.75
$10.95 (pb) ● $6.99 (eb)
ISBN 978-1-945805-03-5 (pb)
FICTION – Literary
Publication Date: April 2017
E.J. Runyon, is an American novelist and short story writer, and the author of the non‐fiction writing guide Tell Me (How to Write) A Story. She runs the writer’s website, Bridge to Story, and coaches writers, from around the globe, online. Her fiction is enjoying good reviews in both the U.S. and U.K. on Amazon, GoodReads and on various blogs, and her debut novel, A House of Light & Stone has placed as a finalist for the 2015 Golden Crown Literary Society award in the category Dramatic Fiction.