In a world filled with "broken toys", Lynn works as a stripper to save for college, discovering the tenuous line between what she will and won't do for money and salvation. Based on true events.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Pretty is Just a Face I Make is Ellen Mae Smith's first novel. She lives in New Orleans with her husband, dog, and two cats.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
New Orleans in my veins. I feel her hands on my neck, her fingers spreading out toward my face, pulling my hair. New Orleans is female. She's dark, lazy, and mysterious. Decadence is only one of her graceful charms. I want her wet heat and musk smell. I want blue skies and palm trees in my view. Feminine is repeated in her graceful wrought iron balconies and Spanish villas.
I am green chameleons on the patio and giant winged roaches stomped into the pavement. I'm the ancient oak spreading its low branches into the earth the same way she would dig her nails into the back of my neck. The heat closes and threatens to suffocate, just as her fingers once did.
The city lies and is fickle. But, if she senses your total and true love, she will reward you. She will welcome you as she has all the children who've sought her port over the centuries. We're all from somewhere else. Coming home to mother at the mouth of the Mississippi.
ONE
All I've ever wanted is to paint. I'm driving away from my life so that I can find a way. I wish I could paint the landscape of my dreams. It's so different than the one stretching before me now.
As the numbers spin on the gasoline pump, I again think of calling Mom. Following that thought, is the same one that has followed for the last 12 hours. I'll wait until I get to New Orleans.
She'll say I'm running away. In reality, I'm saving my life. There were really only two choices. The first choice was in the medicine cabinet; a bottle of Vicodin just refilled. The second choice was to listen to the dream.
For the past six months I've had a recurring dream that I'm on the road, driving to New Orleans. It was my soul's escape plan for a brain that couldn't form any plans in waking time. In waking time, I was slave to an ulcer inducing job and an emotionally sadistic relationship. I lost gainful employment a week ago and the Marquis de Sade the day before yesterday.
A vision of the small amber colored medicine bottle flashes in front of me. There's a catch in my throat, a growing panic. I climb back into the cramped car and pull out onto the highway. I should be in New Orleans tomorrow afternoon. The vision pushes me on.
Alabama's blue pines reach to the sky and play shadows on the roadside in the setting sun. The heat wraps around me like a favorite blanket. Cleveland's ice melts from my bones the way snow puddles from childhood igloos. It is easy, here in the wet heat, to believe that my desire for a dreamless sleep will evaporate as well.
This is a lot easier than I ever imagined it could be. Maybe because I'm running to something, not from something. Anyway, that's what I keep telling myself.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Insightful look at one life's experiences in NOLA,
This review is from: Pretty is Just a Face I Make (Paperback)
A gripping story of a young woman who attempts to pursue her dream, and make a new beginning for herself in New Orleans. Based on true events, the main character, Lynn, escapes a bad relationship, dysfunctional family, the painful aftermath of a car accident and moves to New Orleans in hopes of attending college and becoming an artist. Once in New Orleans, she is confronted with the struggles of trying to make ends meet on her own, to survive, subsist, and still have the means to pursue her dream.Ellen Mae Smith has done an incredible job of capturing every detail regarding the life of a stripper. The descriptions of the clubs in the tourist packed French Quarter, the personalities of every character she encounters, and the personality of the main character herself all were masterfully written. A must read for anyone who appreciates New Orleans, or for anyone who is pondering taking the first steps and starting a new life.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Hidden Treasure from the Steamy French Quarter,
By DANIEL W. SKELTON (Metairie, LA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Pretty is Just a Face I Make (Paperback)
By turns poetic and insightful, exciting and frantic, steamy and sexy, "Pretty Is Just A Face I Make" is a hidden treasure waiting to be discovered behind the forbidden doors of the Big Easy. It follows the experiences of a stripper in New Orleans, from her beginnings as an inexperienced runaway in need of quick cash, through a year in which she is transformed, and hardened, and hurt, and ultimately... well, you'll have to read the book to discover just how far she goes.This is the other side of the table dance, told in a way that manages to avoid the usual clichés and stereotypes. Based on real events, there is simply not a false note in the novel, from its genuine (and sometimes genuinely creepy) characters to descriptions of the French Quarter that are so exact that I could almost smell its perfume and decay. I found this book to be entertaining from beginning to end, with sections that left my jaw slack with astonishment. This is not a world that has been part of my personal experience, but having read this book, I feel as if I have been permitted to see through the sunny gray eyes of a fascinating, unique, beautiful person who became, by novel's end, more than real. And did I mention that this book is really sexy?
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
painting an abstract picture,
By A Customer
This review is from: Pretty is Just a Face I Make (Paperback)
With words as her medium and the pages as her canvas, Mrs. Smith paints the provocative story of a young woman escaping from her destructive past in search for a new beginning. Struggling to make ends meet, the young art student Lynn, attempts a career in striptease within the steamy confines of New Orleans. In the process, she discovers a new world and hidden truths about herself. It's a voyeuristic look into the competitive world of striptease and temptation written with honesty and clarity. Her writing shines brightest when describing sense of place. If you have never been to New Orleans, grab onto the authors words and allow them to transport you to the French Quarter.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
