With its desperate acts and dire consequences, Nell Peters's tale of a woman's life in northern Wisconsin is a remarkable story, full of the sense and sound and flavor of a time and place rarely visited in books. Nell's tomboy childhood, her businesslike initiation into sex on the eve of her departure for the WACs in 1951, her resulting pregnancy and return home to a life sharply at odds with small-town conventions, her struggle to keep her twin sons, and her disastrous sexual liaisons with men and women alike are recounted in this funny, gritty, and wildly candid book.

Nell Peters lives in Eagle River, Wisconsin. This is her first book. Robert Peters is professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of more than thirty books of poetry, criticism, and plays, including Crunching Gravel: A Wisconsin Boyhood in the Thirties and For You, Lili Marlene: A Memoir of World War II.