Sister Golden Hair

Steinke’s (Easter Everywhere) latest novel opens as 12-year-old Jesse’s father, an ex-Methodist minister, is settling the family in for a new life in Roanoke, Va. With a perpetually dissatisfied mother, a father tossed in the waves of spiritual uncertainty, and a little brother happily rooted in the childhood that Jessie is quickly leaving behind, she turns to the neighbors in her duplex community at Bent Tree for companionship and guidance. Jesse consults older women wise in the ways of dance and romance, peers well informed on superstitions, and Playboy Bunnies in an attempt to understand the budding sexuality pushing her into the uncharted territories of liberation and loneliness. Her treasures, like her copy of Big Book of Burial Rites and the Cher and David Bowie songs piping from the radio, are the endearing artifacts of a young girl struggling both to stand out and to fit in. Despite its lack of surprises, Jesses’s story is nevertheless convincing, filled with nostalgia for the early 1970s. (Oct.)