Book: Imperfect Birds by Annie Lamott

Continuing in her unique voice, Annie Lamott's new novel is set in the towns of northern California. It is about a couple and their 17-year-old daughter, who gets increasingly caught up in the drug scene, all the while maintaining her innocence, or at least her minimal involvement. Her parents worry more and more and catch her in lie after lie, and agonize and fret and worry and wonder what to do. Tears, hand-wringing, moments of terror, arguments.... Slowly, their household begins to totally revolve around their daughter and her moods, her emotions and her friends. At one point in writing about the Mother's generalized angst, the author writes: "Desperate she tried to pray, until she remembered she didn't believe in god...." which made me laugh out loud.

Threads of religion, spirituality, friendship, aging and daily life in the beautiful hills north of San Francisco run through this book.

For all the parents who raise teenagers today, this novel will throw light on the darker sides of their world and the whole mucky mess of peer pressures, desires for recognition and acceptance and love, their youthful edginess and energy, their wildness, their kindness and the hopeful poignant moments when they acknowledge to themselves that what they are doing probably isn't all that great. Even good kids...

(I read this in Starbucks today as the wind was blowing so hard at the lake. My car just had $5400 worth of repairs from a hail incident, I didn't want flying debris and tree limbs to fall on it since I don't have a garage.)