Genre Fiction Saved My Life

Published at Human Parts on March 31, 2015.

For me, these books were beautiful escapism. They permitted me to step away from the constant shuffle of life as a divorced kid. My week parceled out between my mother and father. I moved back and forth between two families. Tuesday, Friday, and every other weekend was my father’s time; the rest of the days went to my mom. Different houses, different rooms, different family members, and different responsibilities. The trade paperbacks moved to and fro with me. I tucked them in my backpack or purse before school at one house, and read them in the evenings at another. They offered escape from the fraught complexity of living in two places, but never quite feeling at home.