Jasmine in My Hand

Book excerpt: In Jasmine In My Hand, first-time author Mus White captures the world of Pia, a young Danish girl who whirls through time like a space traveler, alternating between an impoverished childhood in Copenhagen and what becomes a privileged married life in Los Angeles. Bringing a bold and original voice to her novel, White suspends the reader between rage and a state of grace. One moment Pia is an expectant granny, looking in terror toward old age. The next, she is the child tiptoeing past the dragon father. Then she is a twelve-year old minigolf champ; a young, depressed mother in Sweden; a middle-aged matron driving a Jaguar; and, in the end, the queen of the light switches, her metaphor for being in command of her own life.