My agent writes amazing things about it on her website at Greenhouse Literary Agency--things that make me blush and mumble and pinch myself to be sure this is all real.
The short version...
The summer after high-school graduation, a year after her mother’s tragic death, and Anna has no plans – beyond her need to put a lot of miles between herself and the past. With forever friend Kat, a battered copy of Kerouac’s DHARMA BUMS, and a car with a dodgy oil filter, the girls set out on an epic road trip across the USA. Maybe somewhere along the way they’ll prove or disprove the existence of God. Maybe they’ll even get laid . . .
I'm terrible at writing pitches, but I can give you a little snippet from the first chapter, and I hope you enjoy! The characters in KtMS are my favorites, and I'm so excited at the thought of sharing them.
She would not shut up about the rucksack revolution. I have no idea how many times Katy read that passage to me, how many times she begged me to do something exciting with our last summer together—something besides shuttling coffee to little old ladies and phony hipster teens at the Village Inn. Something besides taking care of my father.
I never believed we’d really go. I mean, how could I leave? There was my dad, lying on that sunken Goodwill bed, no longer able to sway me with his golden voice, staring bleakly into the dusk. The ever-present tumbler of whiskey leaving rings on the hardwood floor.
But the idea was so tempting—a way to escape. I thought of the stacks of college applications lying still in their envelopes on the kitchen counter. My lack of a boyfriend, my persistent virginity. The fact that I don’t believe in God anymore.
It's a journey both outward and inward. Through the Badlands and encounters with predatory men and buffalo. A crazy bus ride to Mexico with a bunch of hymn-singing missionaries. Facing death, naked in the forest with an enraged grizzly bear . . . . Gradually, Anna realizes that this is a voyage of discovery into her own self, her own silent pain - and into the tangled history that she and Kat share. What is love? What is sexual identity? And how do you find a way forward into a new future - a way to declare openly and without fear all that lies within you?
