"No shrinking violet, that Duhn woman!" -Facebook friend
How can one person's seemingly mundane and silly little Facebook posts tell such a compelling story? This collection of snappy quips and longer personal essays will feel familiar and relatable as it shines a light on the absurdities of a complex and happy little life.
Back in 2008, Shelly and her family moved home to Western New York, and bought a shitty, shabby old house that she still intends to gut someday. She joined Facebook to keep in touch with the friends she left behind out of state.
In the beginning, she wrote the same expected, "We ate pizza tonight" and "25 things about me" posts that everybody else wrote. But over time, Facebook came to be something different. Chronic health challenges kept her from pursuing her dreams, but Facebook enabled her to be a real, writing writer in short little bursts.
Nothing can ever stay the same, though, and a traumatic event forced Shelly to abandon her old self and fight to emerge from the darkness.
(...yeah, thats laying it on a little thick. I had a stroke in 2021. Coming back from it has been difficult and scary, that's all.)
There is such a normal, not-special, specialness about the posts in this book. They're fearlessly funny and irreverent, sometimes vulnerable and hurt, and even at times outspoken and furious. They will inspire you to be patient with and accepting of your own messy self.
With fierce writing and easy skill, this fast-paced book is filled with tenderness and affection, wicked humor, crackling wit, and radical honesty. And, omg, so much cussing.
