Slow burning literary fiction about a girl who becomes wrapped up in a sinister commune in 1960's California. The premise the book hammers home is that girls are taught by society to be empty vessels, waiting for someone to fill them. Because this someone can easily be confused with anyone, girls are left vulnerable and susceptible to be taken advantage of, groomed, and molded to the will of others.

The protagonist remarks at one point that when a doctor asks her how she feels, she often is at a loss for knowing what the correct answer is... that's why she goes to the doctor, so he can tell her what she is feeling. I completely understand this, and have spent many years purposefully and intentionally listening to my body, my intuition, and experimenting with "going with my gut" (it has never let me down). Now I am often surprised when people are deaf to what their own body is telling them, but I forget that we are told that our voices are not trustworthy.

Anyways, in the book, teenage girls are left to drift around, being used and abused by anyone who takes an interest in them, seeking to please and leaving their consciences behind in pursuit of being loved. There's a scene in the book where the protagonist, as an adult, tries to give a teenage girl the emotional presence needed to say no to some men trying to peer pressure into giving away sexual favors. Thinking that perhaps if this girl had what she lacked, the girl would make the choice to say no. Ultimately the girl decides to please the men, perhaps because the intervention came too late in life, or the pull to please (in a hopeful exchange for approval, acceptance, and love) trumped a barely-existent friendship with the older woman. It's a call to action to be a present role model and investor in the lives of girls you know.

I think this book has much to say about teenage girl psychology today, and how destructive current society is on the psychological, emotional, and even physical development of girls and women.