THE ORIGINAL 1982

A debut novel that juxtaposes the narrator’s memories with thoughts of what could have been had she made a different decision back in 1982.

An aspiring singer/songwriter, a rebel and a developing alcoholic, young Lisa is in love with a South American musician 13 years her senior who has achieved a certain stardom and can have his pick of beautiful women. She meets him when he comes into the cafe where she works as a waitress and admires her beauty. She knows she is one of many women in his life but thinks perhaps she will be the special one when she becomes pregnant with his child. But since he makes it clear he doesn’t want her to have the baby, she has an abortion, a decision she very much regrets 30 years later, when she decides to revisit it. Addressing the man, she writes: " 'Maestro, I’m not having an abortion. Get ready. You’re going to have a child.’ And since I'm the writer of this story, and can do whatever I want, that’s what I’ll do. Go back to that day in 1982.” She goes on to invent a child she names Minnow, and over the course of the book, she tells her imagined daughter’s story as well as her own, mixing in events that did actually happen in 1982.  

Reality and imagination converge in this what-if tale.