Things I Did Anyway: Truth from a Virtuous Liar

By Leslie Tucker

Things I Did Anyway tells the story of a woman raised in affluent suburban Detroit, with strict Methodist, Midwestern values as the bulwark of her emotional and physical life. That is, until she's 17 and begins making choices against her better judgment, reveling in the thrill of risk-taking. In the face of manipulative family deception, a girl and then a woman, trying and failing to follow rules, explores her own defiant nature, raw sexuality, and development of fierce feminist values. The story begins with our rebellious girl hopping into the car with a Brad Pitt look-alike and facing pregnancy before high school graduation. She must drive herself to a dilapidated Detroit hospital because her mother insists that she give birth where she won't be recognized. She refuses to marry and keeps her daughter, striding across her college campus with the infant in a backpack, holes cut for tiny feet. The memoir is told in tightly linked essays shifting from early childhood to her first earsplitting Rolling Stones concert at 16, to a weed-in-her-underpants smuggling caper on Maui in her 30s, and finally to a peaceful Carolina mountainside. What emerges is a complicated woman, accomplished pianist and music instructor, mother, wife, and outdoors adventurer, whose early life lessons continue to inform and shape her. In adulthood, the narrator confronts an undercurrent of lies in her family of origin, she unravels her relationships with a deceitful, emotionally abusive mother and an exhausted but warm, loving father. Finally, she chooses to focus on joy, finding contentment in places she formerly scorned as pedestrian. The essays embody the muscular voice of a driven woman, one with rock music blasting in her head for most of her waking hours, wishing she was Mick Jagger. This book will appeal to readers who have overridden their innate good judgment and intelligence for the impending thrill of momentary risk. Boomers, rebellious women, mothers who struggled to conform, lapsed former members of any church, and music freaks who define their lives by the soundtrack of the 60s and 70s blaring in their brains, will find themselves in these essays.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0982997655
• ISBN13: 9780982997659
• Release Date: June 2024
• Publisher: Spoken and Written Words, LLC
• Length: 316 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.7" x 6.0"