Failure To Zigzag: A Novel

It's southern California in the early Sixties, and Charlotte is a teenager, which is bad enough. She also has strange grandparents, with whom she lives, a schizophrenic ventriloquist alcoholic mother who appears and disappears regularly from her life, and only vague information about the father who died before Charlotte was born.



With so much craziness in the family, Charlotte figures, whether it's "nature" or "nurture," she's doomed. In Failure to Zigzag, Jane Vandenburgh gracefully zigzags...