A masterful storyteller, Maureen Stanton has written a timeless and timely memoir of an all-American girlhood derailed by drugs and loss, which manages to be both heartbreaking and hilarious, moving and memorable. At once a personal story and a portrait of a place shaped by the prison that shared its name, Body Leaping Backward is a brilliant examination of morality and culture in crisis, of girlhood and family and fierce desire, of loss and addiction, and ultimately of what brings us home. Important and riveting, this is a wonder of a book. 

                                                                        ~ E.J. Levy, author of Love, in Theory and The Cape Doctor