The long, wondrous life of a mostly closeted Texas lesbian, from teenage years in the kitchen at the men's prison to old age in a trailer off RR 23, with the 20th century rolling by in the background.
...When we first meet Dara, she is a 19-year-old Texan who has fallen in love with her best female friend, Rhodie. Given that this takes place in 1923, decades before the gay-liberation movement, to say that this presents a problem is an understatement ... so despite being a lesbian, Dara agrees to marry a kindly prison warden ... A lovely debut that addresses race and class, sexuality and identity.
As a lesbian in the 1920s, Miss Dara knows a thing or two about being an outcast. When she falls in love with her best friend, Dara runs from her hometown and everything she knows to work as a kitchen girl at the Imperial State Prison Farm in Sugar Land, Texas ... Then one day, she receives a marriage proposal from the warden. She decides to settle down with him, despite her heart’s true urgings ... With a lively sense of humor and a great sense of place, tammy lynne stoner’s debut is a Southern novel from a voice that rings true ... A novel of exploration, bravery and redemption, with keen insight into race, class, gender identity and social norms, Sugar Land is the story of a woman learning to come home to herself.
Sugar Land is a raw, spiraling, and hopeful story about a woman who wishes that she didn’t love as she does, and the life she leads in the wake of her self-realizations.
