It's Not Like I Knew Her

Jodie Taylor's childhood is filled with loss, abuse, chronic disappointment, and an instinctive awareness that her desire for women will forever make her an outcast. At 18, she flees her home town in rural north Florida and arrives in racially charged Selma, Alabama in 1956 as a penniless fugitive.She finds work in a café that is frequented by racist nightriders and, with an eye on the door, she hunkers down behind a wall of lies and half-truths. Her self-imposed silence with the family she left behind is broken when a crisis sets Jodie on a backward journey. As she struggles to reconcile her past with the present, she begins the inward journey she must take to truly find her home. 

". . . one of the most deeply felt novels I have read in a long time. Jodie Taylor is an unforgettable character. Her at times gut-wrenching journey of self-discovery and truth is a tale for the ages. Pat Spears is a rare writer. She peers into the heart of darkness and finds redemption. Read this book."--Connie May Fowler, author of How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly and Before Women had Wings

". . . Rarely have I been so taken by a character in a novel as I have been by the stubborn, broken, generous Jodie Taylor "--Sally Bellerose, author of The Girls Club

"Despite the novel's thematic gravity, which includes discrimination and alienation based on sexual orientation, gender, race, and poverty, it has a sharp, sometimes irreverent tone that punctuates the tension in just the right places."--Amanda Silva, essayist