Riverfinger Women — Elana Dykewomon

Award-winning author Elana Dykewomon's wonderful debut novel about lesbian life in America during the social upheaval of the late 1960s and early 1970s (Adrienne Rich). Written when she was just twenty-four years old, RIVERFINGER WOMEN is Elana Dykewomon's beloved, intimate coming-of-age novel about Inez and her circle of friends -- the Riverfinger women -- struggling to find themselves amid the changing social mores of the Civil Rights era. Inez has known she was a lesbian since childhood, and while moving between Highland, her boarding school, and her friends' Greenwich Village apartment, she experiences longing and disappointment, friendship and romance, and her first real relationship, with schoolmate Abby. Along with their experimental and outgoing friend Peggy, Inez and Abby graduate from Highland and move into adulthood, confronting the prejudices of the larger world as they go. Told in an engrossing interweaving narrative, RIVERFINGER WOMEN explores the characters' brushes with sexual violence, prostitution, drugs, love, and, ultimately, happiness amid the thrills and challenges of lesbian life during the second women's liberation movement. Originally published in 1974, this groundbreaking novel was honored with the 2018 Lee Lynch Classic Award.