Rita Jackson is a young woman on the skids, spending her time in shelters and on the dot-com-drunk streets of late 1990s San Francisco. She's a young woman haunted by the murder of her mother when she was thirteen, and a young bride haunted by the disappearance of her husband, Jimmy, who split after a nasty argument more than a year earlier. Together Jimmy and Rita were slipping into drugs and hard times. Rita is filled with feelings of guilt and failure, and the hope that she will one day and Jimmy. She doesn't know that he is still in the city, still in love with her, waiting tables in an expensive restaurant while trying to get a foothold in the straight life.
When Rita witnesses the aftermath of a murder, her own life is endangered. She becomes involved with Gary Shepard, a married criminal investigator drawn to the dark side of this young woman. What unfolds is a story of three flawed people struggling with themselves as much as with their circumstances, as each of them is pulled more deeply and dangerously into the consequences of their decisions. When a drunken night leads Jimmy to jeopardize his second and last chance, it seems unlikely that these sweet, damaged people will ever come to anything, let alone find and -- miracle of miracles -- save one another.
But fate, in Addonizio's hands, works in strange and beautiful geometries. And redemption, she tells us, is never impossible.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 5.0 / 5.0
wow:
Well, this is an amazing book. I've known Addonizio was a phenomenal poet (my personal favorite), but now it seems she is a fantastic fiction writer as well. This book has easily made my list of favorites. It's a tragic love story that picks up where her book of poems, Jimmy & Rita, leaves off. It's a quest that these two young people have in finding each other and the pitfalls that life places in their way. I look forward to more from Addonizio.
Sexy, alluring, heart breaking. Another amazing write by Addonizio.:
I have been a fan of Kim Addonizio's work for several years now. I own and have read almost all of her poetry and fiction. Her latest novel "My Dreams Out in the Street" amplifies her versatility as a poet and fiction writer. She is an inspiration to any woman who seeks to write vivid and honest stories or poems.
I finished this book in three days and later felt bad for going through it so fast, but it was that compelling. The pictures she paints of Jimmy and Rita's lives are gritty and beautiful at... more info
Best new novel I've read this year!:
Kim Addonizio is a marvelous original. She writes like a divine union of Flannery O'Conner and Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner and Raymond Chandler. She's one of the most unadorned, artful spiritual writers I know. My Dreams Out in the Street has everything I look for in a contemporary novel. Rita, its lead character, is compelling. Alternately sexy, mysterious, stupid, resourceful, and inept, She moves through San Francisco's underbelly with unflagging desperation. Struggling to survive, Rita is... more info
Dark and disturbing, yet oddly romantic, summer tale worth checking out:
Desperate times call for desperate measures, so the saying goes. But what if, in your desperation, you are alone, with nothing but the clothes on your back? And, then, what if you lose those clothes, too? Such are the desperate times of 24-year-old Rita Jackson, who finds herself homeless on the streets of San Francisco, trying to avoid heroin and prostituting herself for money for booze, cigarettes and cheap motel rooms. Rita is the sad, lonely and unforgettable protagonist of Kim Addonizio's new novel, MY... more info
Privacy policy: we don't collect information
about visitors except for the standard technical server logs. We don't send unsolicited emails. We don't
sell the information that we don't collect about you to anyone. When you follow
links to other sites, their privacy policies apply. Thanks for visiting!
