Penny has been incarcerated for breaking into a car. Her friend, Clyde, bails her out. Clyde persuades her to join an ashram, on the ‘Hana side’, to get some ‘free rehab’. There, Penny is befriended by a motley crew of counter culture celebrities, also rehabilitating from cocaine abuse. Penny becomes romantically involved with the group’s darling, Armando, and is drawn into working in their pot growing co-op. Halfway to harvest Larry, the money man, decides to start a separate operation. Larry imports Stevie, a master grower from Humbolt. Stevie has perfected a short season strain that will mature at the same time as the ongoing crops. Stevie and his wife, Rebecca, share close quarters with the group. They are made privy to all current growing locations. Larry and Stevie need a new location, for the ‘ninety day wonders’, and partner with Samuel Lee. What no one knows, or suspects, is that Stevie’s plan is to rip off everyone. In one night he cleans out Larry, Armando and Samuel Lee. Samuel Lee goes on a rampage, suspecting everyone but Stevie. Larry winds up getting busted. Penny and Armando are forced to flee the island. They go to Armando’s original home, New York City. They become intrinsically involved in the socially charged art scene, but blind sighting events force them to flee again. This time to India...
B-SIDE GIRLS KNOCKIN' SUGAR IN THE GOURD is total commotion. Shelly Taylor introduces an ontological vision of southern feminist sociality where girl power is fully operative in every gesture, every utterance. Pitch perfect and vivacious, the pulse of place and space somewhere between Sodom & Loudiwici is 'the whole underearth reverberating faultline.' Headstrong and energized, here is an anthem that sings the gorgeousness of specificity, marking phenomena and sensation with each breath. As delicate and fleeting as the morning dew and as powerful as the sun's rays, these poems radiate the wonder and delectation of existence.--Brenda Iijima Poetry.
Have you ever wished you could run away to a tropical island and escape from all of your problems? In Shelly Taylor's Wages of Sin, Penny did just that. Stalked by a notorious gang, Penny takes a suggestion from a T-shirt and buys a one way ticket to Maui. She is immediately adopted by a cave dwelling, pot growing Viet Nam vet. From hippies to druggies to restaurateurs; Penny spends years flopping to and fro from the frying pan to the fire. Eventually she settles into a seemingly safe routine of work and friendships. One can't run away forever, though. Sudden events bring the past reeling back full force. A choice must be made. Which way will she go?
There's a fine density and intensity to this work, the 'thinginess' that informs our actual lives, and a radically innovative use of language. I kept thinking of the alabaster bear and petrified whale vertebrae on our mantle, these fabulous memories of life. This is a fine book.-Jim Harrison Black-Eyed Heifer is a mighty anthem to down home local cultureùthe deeply rootedùthe feisty, sustaining rhythm that saturates the land. These lyrical prose poems sing a 'rampant fire' tune 'to yesterday's hands-up hinterland' and the fact that 'there were horses, there always are.' There is abundant vitality and wide-eyed beauty in Shelly Taylor's contemporary Georgian eclogues, 'all the while mindful of the color turn' and 'silent footwork & news.'-Brenda Iijima The prose poems of Shelly Taylor's first collection create stories that poke through your eye & go straight through your head. Ms. Taylor makes up words in 'holler time: language you haven't heard before but know, right away, to be urgent. I can tell you that she 'put me ripened there: into a three-dimensional South of horses, fields, and characters Her poems are hell-bent, mad-cap adventures whose diction & syntax defy category.-Jane Miller
Exhausted, in the aftermath of her life changing experience in India, Penny returns to the United States. She wants nothing more than to go home to Maui, but she can't afford the air fare from New York. She knows there are cheap fares from California and she has family there. Penny takes a cross country bus from Port Authority, New York, to San Jose, California. She arrives a few days before the Thanksgiving holiday. Penny's cousins live across the Golden Gate Bridge, in Marin County. Penny loves Marin County and decides to look for a rental. Unfortunately, the impromptu family reunion, occasioned by her arrival, turns out to be a colossal disaster. Rejected and cast out Penny revisits her plan to return to Maui. En route to the travel agency she stumbles upon an advertisement for a house sitting position. Penny calls the advertiser, Scott. To her delight the position has not been filled. Essentially homeless, Penny thinks it's her lucky day and takes the job. All these activities are observed by Scott's neighbor, a police officer named Matt. Matt immediately acquaints himself with Penny in an effort to warn her about Scott. Unfortunately, Penny is more apt to mistrust a police officer than seemingly harmless home owner, Scott. What Penny is doomed to learn is that Scott has a sinister agenda, and that his ad is an ongoing lure for forgotten people.
Life behind bars isnt a picnic for David Taylor. David had always been a good kid who helped his mother take care of his brothers because of the accident that had left her a widow. He was fabulous at sports and had a very good chance of going pro in football or basketball. David had a wonderful girlfriend who would do anything in the world for him and had actually found true love in high school. Sometimes even the best of kids end up getting mixed up with the wrong crowd. David meets Luke Hardy, Alan Roberts, and the other 4 Life members. Now all David can do is think of the mistake that he made that brought him to prison. Will David ever be able to forgive himself for what he did or will one mistake haunt him forever?
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