Brown's surefooted debut novel takes its title from the term used to describe the time when a fetus's movement distinguishes it as having a separate life of its own. In 1985, in rundown upstate Ransomeville, N.Y., Miranda "Mandy" Boyle is preparing to depart for college. Finally, she will be able to escape from her hypochondriacal mother, who crushes Mandy under the weight of her obsessive scrutiny. Once at Albany State, Mandy's dreams of privacy and the opportunity to reinvent herself are realized, at least in part. But tragedy strikes when Mandy's father's dies. An enormously obese barroom philosopher whom she adores, he had been her intellectual mentor, and Mandy thinks that she has been bereft of the wrong parent. Feeling abandoned and helpless, she resists her nagging mother's demands to come home and her roommate's pleas that she get counseling. Instead, she throws herself into the arms of "the one person I didn't need forgiveness from," another fugitive from Ransomeville, a drainage ditch cleaner named Booner who convinces her to move into his filthy apartment in New York City. In addition to an office job, Mandy signs up for a photography class, using her father's old 35-millimeter camera and learning to see her world in new ways. But an unwanted pregnancy seems to presage a future with Booner that for the first time she has the insight and courage to resist. With the nearly Sisyphean task of overcoming her dismal past, Mandy is a heroine worth rooting for. When she recognizes the power of choice in determining her own course in life, most readers will cheer, even if the path she ultimately chooses would not be acceptable to everyone. 4-city author tour, with Elizabeth Berg

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