Stephanie Thornton Plymale

Elissa Wald

"A STORY OF REDEMPTION AND FORGIVENESS"--NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW For 50 years, Stephanie Plymale kept her past a fiercely guarded secret. No one outside her immediate family would have guessed that her childhood was fraught with every imaginable hardship: a mentally ill mother who was in and out of jails and psych wards throughout Stephanie's formative years, neglect, hunger, poverty, homelessness, truancy, foster homes, a harrowing lack of medical care, and ongoing sexual abuse. Stephanie, in turn, knew very little about the past of her mother, from whom she remained estranged during most of her adult life. All this changed with a phone call that set a journey of discovery in motion, leading to a series of shocking revelations that forced Stephanie to revise the meaning of almost every aspect of her very compromised childhood. American Daughter is at once the deeply moving memoir of a troubled mother-daughter relationship and a meditation on trauma, resilience, transcendence, and redemption. Stephanie's story is unique but its messages are universal, offering insight into what it means to survive, to rise above, to heal, and to forgive.

A Memoir

American Daughter

Two identical twin sisters - one a sexually repressed defense attorney, the other a former libertine now living a respectable life in suburbia - are about to have their darkest secrets revealed, to the men in their lives and to themselves. As one sister prepares for the thorniest trial of her career and the other fends off ominous advances from a construction worker laboring on the house next door, both find themselves pushed to the edge, and confronted by discoveries about themselves and their lovers that shock and disturb them.

The Secret Lives of Married Women

In Wald's darkly erotic stories, characters enact the intricate and subtle ways that dominance and submission play a role in their daily lives: a young girl dreams of submitting to a boy who's not interested in controlling her, an ex-convict is so accustomed to serving his cellmate that he cannot adjust to the outside world, a professional dominatrix is beaten at her own game by a psychiatrist, and a student lies his way into the home of an army recruiter in order to become his houseboy. Meeting the Master is a provocative exploration of the pleasures and rituals of dominance and submission.

Elissa Wald

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