No Rules: A Memoir

by Sharon Dukett

Overview

In this coming-of-age memoir, Sharon takes you with her on a nail-biting adventure through the early 1970s after leaving her sheltered home life at sixteen years old to join the hippies. Yearning for freedom, she lands in an adult world for which she is unprepared, and must learn quickly in order to survive.

As Sharon navigates the US and Canada—whether by hitchhiking, bicycle, or the back of a motorcycle—she experiences love and heartbreak, discovers whom she can and cannot trust, and awakens to the growing women’s liberation movement while living in a rural off-grid commune. In this colorful memoir, she reflects upon the changes that reshaped her during that decade, and how the ways in which she and her peers threw off the rules meant to keep women in their place has transformed and empowered the lives of girls and women today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631528576
Publisher:	She Writes Press
Publication date:	06/02/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Sharon Dukett is an award-winning author who was previously a computer programmer, project manager, and deputy director in state government. She and her husband live in central Connecticut in a house he built that overlooks the Connecticut River—the house where they raised their family. She loves reading memoir and fiction from a variety of backgrounds—to learn how others feel, experience life, and deal with their struggles.

Editorial Reviews

2022 Memoir Prize for Books Winner in Adventure
2021 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Winner Memoirs (Historical/Legacy)
2021 IPPY Awards Bronze Winner in Autobiography/Memoir III (Personal Struggle/Health Issues)
2021 National Indie Excellence Awards Winner of the Sponsor's Choice Prize
2021 National Indie Excellence Awards Finalist in Memoir
2020 Best Book Awards Finalist in Autobiography/Memoir
2020 Best Book Awards Finalist in Women's Issues
2020 International Book Awards Finalist in Autobiography/Memoir
2020 Readers' Favorite Book Awards Finalist in Non-Fiction: Women's
2020 CIBA Journey Book Awards Finalist

“This illuminating coming-of-age account chronicles a young woman’s counterculture journey. Dukett’s revealing memoir effectively captures the restless disillusionment of many members of the generation that came of age during the ’60s and ’70s.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“. . . you can almost feel the author sitting next to you, telling her story as an aunt or grandmother would.”
—Readers’ Favorite (5-star review)

“No Rules is a compelling and complex memoir and a deep dive into intergenerational trauma, family, finding ourselves despite unconventional paths, and love in all its forms.”
—IndieReader

“Nothing better than an emotional dose of truth-telling to inspire a soul, and Dukett delivers!”
—Julie Cantrell, New York Times best-selling author of Perennials

“No Rules does more than pull us into the adventures of a girl who finds the courage to leave home and forge a life contrary to everything she has been taught. It is also a reminder that every girl has the right—and owes it to herself—to grow, learn, succeed, and become the woman she is meant to be, no matter how difficult it is to find her way and her purpose in a male-dominated society.”
—Victoria Zackheim, author of The Bone Weaver

“This memoir is filled with beauty and fear and fearlessness and courage and audacity and words to inspire all girls and women that life, as Helen Keller once said, is an adventure . . . Read this book. Give it as a gift to every woman who needs to believe in the greatness of her own life.”
—Amy Ferris, author of Marrying George Clooney: Confessions from a Midlife Crisis

“Beyond flawless exposition, Dukett’s memoir also offers an unflinchingly honest recollection of her years in late adolescence as a “hippie chick” runaway and in her competent story telling hands that is one hell of a story.”
—Corie Skolnick, author of Orfan and America's Most Eligible

“With No Rules, Dukett gives us acute reality around the teenage fantasy of being so mad at your mother you run away from home. Since it’s 1971 and dropping out is a generational pastime, her long journey to womanhood is peppered with the familiar signs of the counterculture times. . . . Relive those days, or experience it all for the first time at her side. You know you want to.”
—Rita Dragonette, author of The Fourteenth of September

“Colorful, adventurous, and transformative . . . unflinchingly raw and unapologetic . . . No Rules is a thrill ride of a memoir.”
—The Nerd Daily

“No Rules, like all great memoirs, grants the reader the feeling of time travel — immersing you in the body of someone who was there to witness a now-alien era.”
—Salon

“Readers seeking a memoir that embraces personal, social, and cultural change and epitomizes the atmosphere of these times will find No Rules an intriguing examination of power, control, influence, and evolution. Its ability to capture the process of questioning and growth and the logical and illogical deductions that emerge during this process is particularly well done, and will lend to discussion as well as insights about the times.” 
—Midwest Book Review 

“. . . a great story, well told.” 
—David Crow, author of Pale-Faced Lie 

From the Publisher

2020-03-20
The daughter of working-class Connecticut parents seeks to escape the trap of conventional society by running away to California in this memoir.

Dukett was barely 16 years old in 1971 when she and her 21-year-old sister, Anne, packed up a few belongings. They jumped in the car with Anne’s boyfriend, Eddie, to drive from South Windsor, Connecticut, to California, where a free and easy life beckoned. Though she had some empathy for her parents, the author, like many of her generation, felt constrained by their caution and conservatism and the limited options of their lives. Long-haired hippies and sunny California seemed to offer unlimited freedom and opportunity. Dukett gave barely a backward glance to her hometown as she, Anne, and Eddie hit the road: “Let them eat their hearts out, wishing they were free like us.” Walking in the hippie mecca of Venice Beach, the sisters met Ed, an older man, who became protector and predator. It was a fitting introduction to a life that was both carefree and precarious, existing on the edge of poverty in a haze of marijuana and idealistic aspirations to a soundtrack of folk-rock music seemingly written just for the siblings. Over the next three years, the author followed the counterculture dream to Boston, Canada, and a commune in New York, stuffing loads of experiences and growing self-awareness into a short time. Dukett’s revealing memoir effectively captures the restless disillusionment of many members of the generation that came of age during the ’60s and ’70s. She is particularly articulate about the sexism that permeated hippie culture and the lifeline that the women’s liberation movement offered to young female adults who had been demeaned by a “free love” ethos that frequently meant exploitation and rape. If readers occasionally become exasperated with the author’s self-destructive choices, there is much to applaud in her process of self-discovery.

This illuminating coming-of-age account chronicles a young woman’s counterculture journey. (acknowledgements, about the author, suggested discussion questions for readers)

Kirkus Reviews