Deanna

Deanna is the book's central character, protagonist, and narrator. As the result of events described in the work's prologue (being caught by her father, at the age of thirteen, having sex with a seventeen-year-old boy), and as the result of several years of intensely uncomfortable, taunting aftermath, Deanna begins the story in a place of desperation. Determined to leave her old life behind, both her physical life at home and her painful, angry, bitter emotional life of suffering at the hands of those who torment her (including her father), she invents a fantasy future for herself. Part of that future involves her moving in with her brother and his family (which includes a new baby), while another part involves developing an intimate relationship with her friend Jason, in spite of his being involved with another of her friends. Over the course of the narrative, however, Deanna comes to...