Embedded Files
by Jayna Sheats
by Jayna Sheats
Seven-year-old Hanna Shelby has one big problem: everyone thinks she’s Johnny Shelby. She’s not only miserable, in 1950s rural Colorado, a boy could get killed acting even a little girlish. So, she buries her doll and tries to fit in. On her twenty-first birthday while working at the embassy in Bonn, Germany, she finds herself teetering on a bridge over the Rhine River. She realizes the risk of not being Hanna is greater than being, and returns to college in the United States presenting as a woman.
She’s disowned by her family and is fortunate to find a home with a German couple. Just as she’s feeling fully at ease in her feminine life, a man sexually assaults and flogs her almost to death. She awakens from a coma acting like a child, with nearly complete amnesia, and speaking only German.
Hanna and her adoptive family move back to Germany to build a new life. But she must confront her unresolved trauma in order to find her hidden dreams.
Although a work of fiction, Jayna Sheats thinks of Hanna's Ascent as the autobiography that could have been if she had taken a different road, and much of it comes from her own life. Hanna's Ascent takes the reader on a singular journey of persistence, survival, and a reminder that good can happen in surprising and unexpected ways.
"I loved the theme of tolerance that takes center stage. Sometimes people are prejudiced against minorities simply because of a lack of information, and this book starts an important dialogue on transsexuals. I loved how vivid Jayna was with the descriptions of events and the emotions of the well-developed characters. This made them relatable." — Readers' Favorite
"Sheats is a dramatic and expressive storyteller . . . Sheats’ prose made me feel like I was there with Hanna, whether it was hiking a mountain or walking along the river. She expertly wrote about Hanna’s emotions and thoughts in age-appropriate ways as Hanna progressed and her psychological healing progressed exponentially… with occasional regressions." — Goodreads Review
"Hanna’s Ascent written by Jayna Sheats is an emotional, eye opening work of fiction about what we now call a transgender individual, a person of one sexual identity, in this case a girl/ woman who was born into the physical body of another identity, so born with the physical traits of a boy/man. I am happy to recommend it." — Goodreads Review
"Jayna's attention to detail, to the intense evolution of emotions in this character's life, is well worth the read. For me, it ultimately gave me a little more hope for humanity." — Goodreads Review
Details
Details
Bink Books
248 pp. ● 6×9
$19.95 (pb) ● $9.99 (eb)
ISBN 978-1-960373-07-6 (pb)
FICTION / LGBTQ+ / Transgender
FICTION / Literary
Publication date: June 18, 2023
Jayna Sheats grew up on a Colorado ranch without electricity, neighbors, or schools, but obtained a ham radio license when she was seven. After language and psychology studies in Colorado and Germany and a PhD in chemistry from Stanford University, she became a researcher and entrepreneur, publishing 60 scientific articles and book chapters, and started three companies. As creator of Hewlett-Packard's e-Inclusion program she worked with Dr. Muhammad Yunus in Bangladesh on telecenters for the poor. Today she lives with her children in northern California, hikes frequently in the redwoods, and writes novels involving social justice and triumph over trauma.
Her website is at https://jaynasheats.com/.
Page updated
Report abuse