Out on submission:
FLAPPERS AND FUGITIVES,
a coming-of-age novel
In FLAPPERS AND FUGITIVES, Hattie Brook, a 15-year-old, working class, white girl living in Jazz Age San Francisco, learns from an 18-year-old detective she meets in a speakeasy that her ostensibly dead father is the Old West outlaw known as the Sundance Kid. Hattie confronts her mother, Etta, who reluctantly reveals a sliver of her past with Sundance, as well as the fact that he’s living in Austin, Texas.
Unbeknownst to Etta, Hattie and her wealthy Black best friend—and latent crush—Ruby McCoy take off by train for Jim Crow Texas in search of Sundance. With the amateur detective on their trail from San Francisco to LA and across the desert to Austin and a freedom town called Clarksville, Hattie and Ruby overcome multiple obstacles related to race, class, and sex.
Finding her father doesn’t make Hattie’s family “whole” in the way she had hoped. Instead, surrounded by half a dozen people who love her, she realizes she’s free to define her family her own way.