Title: Highways and dancehalls
First published: 1995
Description: The daughter of a Harvard-educated family that fell apart, Sarah is seventeen years old and trying to make a living during a recession and a time in her life when the issues she must face far outweigh the coping powers of any adolescent.

Her struggle to make ends meet in desperate economic times, and to come to terms with the events of her past and her present - her parents' break-up and a childhood illness that meant lonely years spent in hospitals - is a poignant tale of how women - all women - come to shape and form their own identities, and find their strength from within.

Tired of waitressing, Sarah becomes "Tabitha," traveling by Greyhound bus through a series of motels and bars in mining towns and middle-class suburbs with a duffel bag full of fringed bras, G-strings, and seamed stockings. Onstage, dressed in elaborate costumes, she offers a vision of sex and beauty. Offstage, she is a thoughtful observer of the men who come to see her dance, the women whose shows follow hers, and the triumphant process of self-discovery.
Subjects: Fiction, Stripteasers, Teenage girls, Health behavior, Prevention, HIV infections, New York Times reviewed, Fiction, general, Canada, fiction
Places: Canada