"His face was painted over by others until he became nothing more than a story"

#9. Read 50 Books.

The first is Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch

The story is about a Southern debutante from Charleston, South Carolina (or Chucktown, South Cackalackie, for those in the know, as I am since my sister went to school there... beautiful city, Charleston is...). The book follows Sarah Walter's life from childhood to her early 30's, as she spirals further into a self-destructive bleakness that leaves the reader with a feeling of depression. No one in her debutante society (the Camellias) ends up truly happy, all enjoy their whiskey (as everyone from the South does, apparently), and there's a ring of sadness encroaching them all. Sarah flees to New York for school and does everything she can to run away from her Southern roots, dropping her accents and picking up the hardness that the "Sunscreen" song warns us about. She falls in and out of love with nice and not-so-nice guys, but she constantly pushes them away, always in search of the ones that are wrong for her.

I picked up the book because the story sounded familiar - girl from the South, a small town outside of a prominent, historically filled city, moves away to "the big city." She has problems in her love life, and has a keen sense of witty humor (which saves the book, and the reader from getting too fed up with Sarah's continued downward spiral and tendency to make the same mistakes repeatedly, never learning from them). Then I flipped through the book... the first sentence I read had the name of a current crush of mine. I flipped some more. And noticed the name of the last crush I had, who my current crush overlapped. I didn't need to flip anymore. I had to read it.

Sarah reminds me of myself in many ways. She seeks out the "bad boys," and has an extremely difficult time getting over the ones that leave her- especially if the reasoning is unclear. She's a masochistic, glutton for punishment and will do anything, anything, to prevent being left. (Well, maybe I'm not that willing, but the fear of being left is pretty strong in me, so that I try not to get too close because of it).  She has a popular, more experienced older sister who goes away to college and falls into emotionally abusive relationships. But where she gives up her life and is embarrassed of her roots, I strive for the opposite. I drop the word "y'all" in everyday conversation, and refuse to lose my accent. I wear pearls daily, and hold onto the Southern charm and manners that were instilled in me since birth.

As the book says: "Where you come from will always effect where you end up."