The Coolest Monsters

Book excerpt: The pieces in this collection range in setting from the small towns of New England to the deserts of the Southwest. Grounded in personal experience these essays ask through narrative what it means to be a rebel girl, a rebel teenager, and a rebel woman in a world that seems to offer no real alternative to traditional roles. Infused with lyrical and figurative language, this collection combines the swiftness of the prose poem with the power of the personal essay resulting in writing that pulls the ground out from under the reader again and again. The collection is organized chronologically in a way that charts the development of a woman as she attempts to adapt to the world around her through stories of love, heartbreak, and adventure. The essays travel with the narrator from a summer camp in Maine, to opal mining in Nevada, to the story of a deadly thunderstorm in Vermont, to hunting for ginseng, asking the questions about belonging, expectation and, ultimately, if there is a chance for real happiness.