ABOUT
THE BOOK

Sarajean Henry is a child of love children. She’s perfectly at home in a place where there are no real “homes”, no last names, and no commitments to the future: the free-love, hippie world of Denver in the 1970s. The story begins when Sarajean is an infant, living with Vietnam veteran Jimmy Henry who she accepts as her father. Whoever her mother may have been, she disappeared long ago. Sarajean successfully scams and scavenges her way through childhood, overcoming obstacles such as Jimmy Henry’s heroin habit and having Miss Rinaldi, the Queen Bitch of Homework, for third grade. By the age of five she’s finding her own way to school; by ten she’s smoking pot. By the time she comes of age she’s seen enough sex and violence to last a lifetime. And from it all, Sarajean puts together the identity she craves, displaying all the resilience of the human spirit. Jonna Rose lives in Portland, Oregon where she works at a book shop.