Pretty is Just a Face I Make - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 192870414X ISBN 13: 9781928704140

Inhaltsangabe

In a world filled with "broken toys", Lynn works as a stripper to save for college, discovering the tenuous line between what she will and won't do for money and salvation. Based on true events.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Pretty is Just a Face I Make is Ellen Mae Smith's first novel. She lives in New Orleans with her husband, dog, and two cats.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

New Orleans in my veins. I feel her hands on my neck, her fingers spreading out toward my face, pulling my hair. New Orleans is female. She's dark, lazy, and mysterious. Decadence is only one of her graceful charms. I want her wet heat and musk smell. I want blue skies and palm trees in my view. Feminine is repeated in her graceful wrought iron balconies and Spanish villas.

I am green chameleons on the patio and giant winged roaches stomped into the pavement. I'm the ancient oak spreading its low branches into the earth the same way she would dig her nails into the back of my neck. The heat closes and threatens to suffocate, just as her fingers once did.

The city lies and is fickle. But, if she senses your total and true love, she will reward you. She will welcome you as she has all the children who've sought her port over the centuries. We're all from somewhere else. Coming home to mother at the mouth of the Mississippi.

ONE

All I've ever wanted is to paint. I'm driving away from my life so that I can find a way. I wish I could paint the landscape of my dreams. It's so different than the one stretching before me now.

As the numbers spin on the gasoline pump, I again think of calling Mom. Following that thought, is the same one that has followed for the last 12 hours. I'll wait until I get to New Orleans.

She'll say I'm running away. In reality, I'm saving my life. There were really only two choices. The first choice was in the medicine cabinet; a bottle of Vicodin just refilled. The second choice was to listen to the dream.

For the past six months I've had a recurring dream that I'm on the road, driving to New Orleans. It was my soul's escape plan for a brain that couldn't form any plans in waking time. In waking time, I was slave to an ulcer inducing job and an emotionally sadistic relationship. I lost gainful employment a week ago and the Marquis de Sade the day before yesterday.

A vision of the small amber colored medicine bottle flashes in front of me. There's a catch in my throat, a growing panic. I climb back into the cramped car and pull out onto the highway. I should be in New Orleans tomorrow afternoon. The vision pushes me on.

Alabama's blue pines reach to the sky and play shadows on the roadside in the setting sun. The heat wraps around me like a favorite blanket. Cleveland's ice melts from my bones the way snow puddles from childhood igloos. It is easy, here in the wet heat, to believe that my desire for a dreamless sleep will evaporate as well.

This is a lot easier than I ever imagined it could be. Maybe because I'm running to something, not from something. Anyway, that's what I keep telling myself.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 192870414X
• ISBN 13: 9781928704140
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar