Bastard Out of Carolina

One sentence synopsis... A harrowing semi-autobiographical story of Ruth Anne, ‘Bone' Boatwright, a young girl growing up entrenched in poverty, family dysfunction, and sexual abuse in the south.

Read it if you like... although it's now popular to put a poor, ‘white trash', female character as the center of a story (a la, ‘Winter's Bone' or ‘My Absolute Darling') this book was one of the earlier ones to accomplish it and the only one of those it's compared to written by a woman. Also a good read for people who liked the heartbreak of ‘A Little Life'. Very different but Bone is another character who will stick with me like Jude.

Dream casting... planning on checking out the 1996 movie version with a young Jenna Malone as Bone.