Good Girl: a memoir of overcoming rape, breast cancer & fundamentalism

Laura Jensen Walker was always a good girl. Growing up in the Midwest in the 1960s, she was a polite, straight-A student who respected her elders, went to church on Sunday, and never gave her parents any trouble. Bookworm Laura was the poster child for good girls everywhere. Until one fateful night in a college fraternity house.

A dreamer and optimist who always bounced back quickly from disappointments and hard times, Laura buried the memory of the-thing-that-must-not-be-named. After that awful night, she plunged headlong into life, joining the Air Force and flying a typewriter across Europe in an exciting, death-defying job as a clerk-typist.

This is the journey of a "good-girl-gone-bad-gone-good-again" and her search for belonging and acceptance, with funny and not-so-funny detours through boot camp, Britain, book-burning, breast cancer, and born-again evangelicals. Ultimately, it's a story of resilience. Victory. And healing.

"GOOD GIRL is that rare find - a memoir of tough times that is neither harrowing nor saccharine but rather brutally honest, sharply intelligent, courageous, clear-sighted, and even funny. Yes, you will boil with sympathetic rage, but the smooth-as-silk writing turns every page into a pleasure and Laura Walker's indomitable spirit will make you stand up and cheer.

--Catriona McPherson, multi-award-winning author of In Place of Fear and the bestselling Dandy Gilver series