Praised for her "unfailingly authentic"

voice and "subtle wit," Valerie Sayers cap-

tures a generation s most cataclysmic mo-

ment in the story of a couple inching

toward the sexual revolution as their

daughter waits in its shadows.

It is November 1963, and the tremors of

change in South Carolina are just begin-

ning to be felt by the Rooneys, a struggling

Catholic family with four children and one

on the way. Dolores Rooney is both

shocked and pleased to he pregnant again

after so m/any years; her husband Bill, a

realtor who s slowly losing his desire to

sell, finds himself increasingly perplexed

by his wife s political and intellectual pur-

suits. Eleven-year-old Kate, confused, in-

advertently funny, and desperate for

answers, is busy searching for the correct

word to describe...sex. While Kate bears

witness to her father s unrest, her

mother s burgeoning self-discovery, and

her older brothers shenanigans, the town

of Due East is marking its own transitions:

Owners of the grand antebellum mansions

coexist with newly arrived residents who

favor cheap trailers. Downtown, the

owner of the drugstore is simply removing

his soda fountain rather than trouble him-

self with desegregation. As events become