Little Miss Strange — Joanna Rose

A girl grows up among Colorado hippies in this “powerful story about coming of age in the 1970s . . . An amazing book” (Richmond Times-Dispatch).
 
Sarajean Henry lives with a Vietnam veteran she accepts as her father. When she comes home, Jimmy might be preparing dinner -- or he might be shooting up. Her mother, whoever she was, disappeared long ago. Sarajean scams her way through childhood, surviving on intuition, smoking pot by age ten. Gathering carelessly discarded clues in this rootless world of communal living, drugs, and adults who reject the traditional trappings of adulthood, she slowly attempts to solve the mystery of where she came from -- and piece together the identity she's always longed for.
 
“Sometimes sweet, sometimes frightening, sometimes hauntingly beautiful” (Statesman Journal), this novel offers both an up-close look at a historically tumultuous moment in American culture, and a timeless look at “an oddly ‘normal' childhood as seen through the eyes of a child who knows nothing else” (Library Journal).
 
“An extraordinarily powerful first novel . . . Sarajean is impossible to forget.” -- Kirkus Reviews
 
“Packed with colorful details reminiscent of the dream the era of ‘free love' left behind.” -- Redbook
 
“A wondrous, uncanny book, like few others you will read . . . So assured and accomplished that it seems the work of a seasoned novelist at the peak of her talent.” -- The Oregonian
 
“The closest thing to a perfect book that I have read in years.” -- The Bellingham Herald