Becoming Bobbie is R. J.'s first published novel.
Hailed as a "stunning debut novel" and "haunting."
It has also been called a "poignant coming of age
story told in a unique narrative voice."
"This is my story, but I'm not much of a storyteller... the memories just seem to get jumbled up. It's a funny thing about memories...
you bury them. You bury them so deep that you think you've forgotten them. But you haven't. Sometime, somewhere, something happens to trigger them..."
Growing up as a bona fide tomboy in the shadow of her fashionable, ladylike mother, Bobbie lives for three things: cars, music and time with her uncomplicated, mechanic dad. She doesn't need much in the way of friends. Her best girlfriends are on the radio--women with names like Aretha, Janis, and Diana. And she loves the cool logic of working on engines--the simple joy of finding the part that doesn't work, of fixing what's broken. But what's broken beneath the shiny facade of her family is something beyond Bobbie's control, a shattering secret that tears her family apart and sends Bobbie into a spiral of anger and defiance that she finds echoed only in the electric pain of rock 'n' roll.
Moving from school to school as a Professional New Kid and all-around loser, Bobbie wonders if she'll ever fit in anywhere, especially as uncomfortable new feelings begin to surface. Shunned by her peers, abandoned by her disapproving mother, Bobbie finds herself drawn to her sympathetic English teacher,
Agatha Claraday. It is her undeniable attraction to the lovely, enigmatic Agatha that changes everything and starts Bobbie on a life-altering odyssey of self-discovery--from the Dark Side of the Moon to Your Little Secret and beyond-- on a redemptive search for love, for a place in the world. and for a space
within that feels like home... where becoming Bobbie means everything about being herself.
