A Family Daughter: Chapter 1
In the summer of 1979, just when Yvette Santerre thought her children were all safely launched and out of the house, her granddaughter came to stay in Hermosa Beach and came down with a fever, and then a rash. Yvette thought it might be stress: Abby was seven, and her parents were considering divorce, and she must have sensed trouble ... MORE

Liars and Saints: Chapter 1
They were married during the war, in Santa Barbara, after Mass one morning in the old Mission church. Teddy was solemn; he took the Mass very seriously. Yvette, in a veiled hat and an ivory dress that wasn't a gown, was distracted by the idea that she was in California, without her father there to give her away, and she was about to change her life and her name ... MORE

Half in Love: Ranch Girl
If you're white, and you're not rich or poor but somewhere in the middle, it's hard to have worse luck than to be born a girl on a ranch. It doesn't matter if your dad's the foreman or the rancher -- you're still a ranch girl, and you've been dealt a bad hand. If you're the foreman's daughter on Ted Haskell's Running H cattle ranch, you live in the foreman's house, on the dirt road between Haskell's place and the barn... MORE