具体描述
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
