Sister Golden Hair

Sister Golden Hair Synopsis

When Jesses family moves to Roanoke, Virginia, in the summer of 1972, shes 12 years old and already mindful of the schism between innocence and femininity, the gap between childhood and the adult world. Her father, a former pastor, cycles through spiritual disciplines as quickly as he cycles through jobs. Her mother is dissatisfied, glumly fetishizing the Kennedys and anyone else that symbolizes status and wealth. The residents of the Bent Tree housing development may not hold what Jesse is looking for, but theyre all shes got. Her neighbor speaks of her married lover; her classmate playacts being a Bunny at Hugh Hefners Playboy Club; the boy shes interested in fantasizes about moving to Hollywood and befriending David Soul. In the midst of it all, Jesse finds space to set up her room with her secret treasures: busts of Emily Dickinson and Shakespeare, a Venus flytrap, her Cher 45s, and The Big Book of Burial Rites, which she reads obsessively. But outside awaits all the misleading sexual mores, muddled social customs, and confused spirituality. Girlhood has never been more fraught than in Jesses telling, its expectations threatening to turn at any point into delicious risk, or real danger.