SPOTS AND TROUBLESPOTS

Fiction. A first novel from a writer whose mentors include Paula Gunn Allen, Jon Wagner, Benjamin Weissman and Elizabeth Treadwell. Sisters Madeleine and Jean and Paula are all over the map. "Jean would've kept going to therapy. There were many reasons why she couldn't. For one, the etiquette was as difficult as at a fancy restaurant or dinner at a wealthy friend's house in high school." Elsewhere, her writing has been described as "startling in the immediacy of its language" - Paul Tullis, commenting on her account of a Gen-X party, published in the nonfiction anthology, Unnatural Disasters: Recent Writing from the Golden State.