Shelley Gilbert

Winner 2009 Eric Hoffer Book Award for Thought Provoking Books and Excellence in Independent Publishing.

"Vivid, compelling, witty, page turner." Little, Brown and Company.
"Wonderful writer...brave, intelligent... dazzling." Benjamin Cheever.
“The best piece of writing on orgasm I have ever in my life read. It’s hard to write a great sex scene. It was raw, quirky, individual, original, impossible to forget, and contains the best description of the experience of having an orgasm.” Susan Grossman, Editor.

Powerful coming-of-age novel of a girl who hates semicolons, loves extremes and lives her life exposed.

Iris Andrea confronts her grief over multiple loss of family by writing her point-blank memoir. In her struggle to know herself and her self-worth, she flashes back to growing up in Brooklyn in the 1960s. She digs up intense childhood anger for her beloved tyrant father, passive mother, jealous sister but she also finds love.
She narrates her encounters with her violent father and rebellion against the trapped submissive females of her family by escaping with the freedom-loving males. She discloses an insecure, sensual adolescence throbbing in the birth of Rock and Roll, all her firsts, her taste in men, shame and attempted suicide, failed marriage, great passion and tragedy.
Iris realizes she's always searching to fill the holes in her whole.