Paper Roses Part 1 - Debby Rose - True Story - Thriller - Historical Fiction Book

What happens when family secrets span generations? When loyalty and survival become entangled with trauma?

In Part 1 of our deep dive into Paper Roses by Debby Show, we're introduced to 13-year-old Abigail in 1970s San Jose as her world spirals into chaos—all before breakfast. From her brilliant but troubled younger sister to a mother medicated into numbness and a father whose absence is deafening, this opening section sets the stage for a haunting exploration of inherited dysfunction.

ABOUT THE BOOK
When Abigail Jones learns of her sister Nikki’s third arrest, she’s pulled into a spiral of questions: Was it fate, family, or something buried even deeper? As Abigail begins to piece together the past, she uncovers a trail of silence and survival that stretches across continents and generations.

From a 1940s Moroccan household where a young maid bears witness to the origins of a generational wound, to the sun-washed suburbs of 1970s California, and finally to 2023—told through podcast transcripts, court documents, and splintered memory—Paper Roses follows Abigail’s search for answers, her confrontation with the sister she thought she knew, and her reckoning with a legacy neither of them could escape.

A haunting story of loyalty, silence, and the cost of breaking free, Paper Roses is perfect for readers of The Vanishing Half, Little Fires Everywhere, and The Paper Palace.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author Debby Show is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and School Psychologist based in California. With years of experience working with individuals and families, she brings a deep understanding of human behavior, relationships, and generational dynamics to her fiction.
Though Paper Roses is her debut novel, Debby has honed her craft through coaching, writing workshops, and a lifelong passion for storytelling. Inspired by real history and intimate truths, her work explores how the past shapes who we become.

She also happens to be the sister of a rather infamous public figure—a detail that has made family gatherings interesting, to say the least. While this is a work of fiction, it draws inspiration from real-life experiences. That said, the spotlight in this story belongs to the generations of women whose legacies are woven across time.

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Host

Jonathan

Host

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What is The Side Quest Book Club Podcast?

If you’re a reader looking for something deeper or an indie author working on your book, The Side Quest Book Club is for you. We skip the usual book reviews and ratings. Each episode turns fun side quests into real lessons, so you’ll leave not just entertained, but with a better understanding of why storytelling matters.

They are driving the Stolen Jeep, Thriller Rebellion, Coursing Through Your Veins. You, you brought this up. This is your, this is your fault.

That's rough. Yasmina had to be a badass. Welcome back to the SideQuest Book Club podcast.

We are reading today, Paper Roses by Debbie Show. It is an exclusive piece written and inspired by a true story. Debbie's sister is a scam artist.

And that's not a slight. She's literally a scam artist. They've done shows on Hulu.

There's a Spotify podcast that covers it, or I guess the podcast is everywhere, but what Debbie Show shared us was a Spotify link. And one of the major news networks did a little mini documentary on it, or docu-series on, on Nikki, as we'll call her. There's an audiobook version as well.

Yeah. If you want to get in on that. You know how we love our audiobooks on the show here.

But give Debbie a follow, a like, a subscription, buy her book. Like this, she's a first time author, right Flava? This is her first book. And she comes at it from a really interesting angle.

You can check out up here, the author interview we did with her a few weeks ago, where she shared about her journey and what inspired this. And she's a therapist and has helped people process their, I'll call it ancestral trauma. Yeah.

Which she also wanted to experiment through her fiction novel, which is based on real events, but not every event in the book is real necessarily, which I have to keep telling myself because we've had a conversation with her. And I'm like, oh my God, that's crazy. I can't believe that happened.

But I don't think that every event that I see in the book is real. Especially the events towards the second half. They're, I'm assuming so.

Sorry Debbie, show if they are. But yes, Jonathan, they're not all real. But especially in my opinion, the ones that are in the second part of the book, I'm like, yeah, based on what she told us and the interview, this is the fictionalized part.

It's still very interesting and captivating. And for a first time author, holy cow, man, she knocks it out of the park. Yeah.

We've talked about this with Callie and Callie is somebody who's already a creative. So of course she's going to knock it out of the park, right? Or it's more expected. But for somebody who is a professional, who's in the psychology world, who's only written technical stuff and journals, man, she really can write fiction well.

I thought it was really good for a first time author, better than anything I've put together. Same. And that's not me being self-deprecating.

That's actually like, wow, this person who started a lot later in life to write fiction, who's been writing only technical stuff and knocks it out of the park. So good on you, Debbie. Good work.

All right, well, let's get into it. Slava, give us a quick blurb about the plot of the book. Yeah.

So Paper Roses, it's a fictional novel. We've said that Debbie shows the author and it chronicles a multi-generational saga of trauma, deception, and resilience across Morocco and California. The narrative of this book alternates between the perspective of Yasmina, a Berber woman who navigates life as a maid in Jewish households during the 1940s in Morocco and her descendants in the United States.

Central to this plot is the volatile relationship between Abigail and Nikki, two sisters. And that's where the Debbie show autobiographical portions come in. Their lives are marked by their mother's instability and Nikki's escalating path to criminal fraud or the criminal life.

Throughout the text, the hand of Fatima, amulet, serves as a recurring symbol of protection and cultural heritage. Ultimately, this is something Debbie talked about too. Ultimately, the story explores the generational ripples of untreated hardship and untreated trauma and the search for forgiveness amidst a legacy that's not really something you wanna talk about, right? It's a betrayal, it's abuse, it's all sorts of dark stuff and we're thrown into it with two major POVs and then one minor POV of a soldier and we'll get into all that.

But we have two major POVs. It's Yasmina and Abigail or Abby and somewhere in the book, their story crosses but we'll save that for when we actually get to it. So paper roses, Jonathan.

That's awesome. Thank you for giving us a quick overview. The book is, what'd we say? About 60, 64 chapters or something like that? Very short chapters.

I think overall it's about 300 pages. But yeah, there's 64 chapters. So I thought it was gonna be longer when I first heard about it.

But hey, either way, 64 short chapters and they alternate between Abigail's timeline and POV then Yasmina's timeline and POV. 324 pages in the copy she sent us but we think it's an early copy. So could be changed just slightly.

If you would like a copy, we can ask Debbie if she will send one to a winner. If she would let us host a scholarship is not the right word. Right.

So if you leave a comment down below we will pick the most interesting one or the most dark one and we will send you a copy of Paper Roses. But here's a setup. A memory of your family.

It could be the greatest memory of all time. The most fun you ever had. Something warm and endearing.

Or it could be a dark memory too. It could be whatever you're comfortable. It could be traumatic.

But whatever you are comfortable with sharing and keep it clean and I don't know. It's the internet. Nobody keeps anything clean.

Keep it publicly legible, right? And the reason that we're picking that this book is specifically written by Debbie to process some of her upbringing to process the fact that her family had stuff from the past that they were dealing with. And so it's not just, Hey, I want you to publicly floodlight us. It's relevant to the book, right? So if you want to read a book that she used for catharsis for herself as a marriage and family therapist and psychologist in the state of California, then like drop a comment with a quick blurb from family member, good or bad that you had.

And we will pick a winner. Maybe we'll pick two or three if the stories are compelling enough. And we will send you copies of Paper Roses to enjoy.

Drop it below. Back to the book. So we start off with 13 year old Abigail.

He wakes up to find her parents, Nanette and Hugh asleep after a late night party. And then her little sister who's four years old at this point is eating cereal on the floor. So the setup there automatically puts you into a place where you know that this is a dysfunctional family.

These kids are, even if they're well fed and taken care of because they seem to be in a house and they seem to have cereal, dad and mom are passed out and the little one is eating off the floor. So you get this setup that leaves no room for the imagination. You already know what you're getting into.

It does sets the scene. And when Abby gets distracted by a book, we can't relate to that. Nikki unlocks the door and escapes the house half naked on a big wheels tricycle.

A neighbor finds her and eventually stops Nikki, brings her back. She's screaming. And then Nanette, the mom obviously blames Abigail for the incident, claiming she should have been watching her.

Nanette then praises Nikki's wild nature. So here we have the setup for the dysfunctional family. And I've seen this, I've experienced this.

So for me, it was, I was empathetic, sympathetic. I understood what Abigail, Abby was feeling because you have this little girl. Yeah, she's a kid, but she's a little shit.

And she's a little shit, not because she's a kid, but because her parents indulge her and then punish Abigail for things that they wouldn't punish Nikki for. So it set up a competition, a rivalry, an animosity between the sisters. And you could see in the first chapter, at least I could see how Abigail is made to feel small all the time.

And this comes up in other chapters. When you're in chapter 50 and she's going through a counseling session, you could see how this continues on into her adulthood. Yeah, the devouring mother as an archetype is very clear here in the setting of the scene.

And if you're not familiar, we see the devouring mother in folklore, in fairy tales and in mythology from years ago, right? But the thing is, the reason it's an archetype is because it's something that mothers do. And this is, don't get me in the comments, it's not all mothers, right? But some mothers who have not processed their own life and they're still children maturity wise, they are devouring mothers. And oftentimes, and this is what Debbie was looking to explore, it comes from their upbringing, right? It comes from something that they haven't processed.

And look, I'm not a parent yet, but I am a live-in uncle and I live with four kids, three kids. And they're six, four, and two. And they've been here for a year.

So they were five, three, and one. And we are participating in the parent ship, I guess I'll call it. And kids have to be trained, right? They have to be trained, they have to be taught stuff.

And you, I can literally see, so it's my brother's kids, my older brother's kids. And I can see him as a kid just again in all three of them. And it is crazy because if you don't deal with yourself and the things that you need to grow out of, because we're all human and we all need to grow out of stuff, then your kids will grow into that.

But if you've grown out of it, you can help educate them and train them and help them mature to expand beyond that. Now, this was a little diatribe, a little side quest, right? About parenting. But you don't have to listen to me.

You can do whatever you want. Debbie here, though, is clearly an expert in the fact that like, she's looking at, hey, this is what I went through and I had to process it. And the conversation we had with her previously in the opening author interview, before we got a chance to read the book, she talked to us about like, feeling like the black sheep of the family, right? But that being the black sheep allowed her to create some healing, not just for herself, but also for her family.

Now, not overall. Her sister still became a scam artist and still hasn't really changed from the sound of it in the way that she probably would have hoped. But we see examples of sort of what she dealt with growing up.

And it makes sense why her family turned out the way that it did because her parents were given the authority, because they're her parents, right? For herself and her sister. And like, they did the best they could, I'm sure. But they didn't exercise the level of authority that they should have to create and cultivate a healthy family.

There's a saying, and I think she might've said this on the previous episode. Maybe I just read it in the book. But healthy families are all the same.

It's the dysfunctional families that are all unique and different. That's not an award you want to win, frankly. You know, Slava comes from a bit of a dysfunctional family.

My family's got some dysfunction. But I can tell from at least my wife and I and what we want to cultivate in our lives, we are like, hey, you got to clean this thing up, you know, just before we have kids. And we talk about this stuff openly.

And so if you're some folks who haven't had kids yet or you do have kids currently, I would say like, nothing's a lost cause. You can absolutely chip in and help your family. But being healthy is boring, frankly.

And it should be, right? Like, you talk about the hard stuff, you discipline when you have to. But you address things, you train up. But it's not easy.

Like, parenting's hard work. So like, this diatribe is not like, oh, hey, it's easy. It's like, no, it's absolutely an additional job that you have to partake in.

Whether you're training up a kid who's a teenager or a child who's two, right? Like, they don't know anything. And then I don't have to tell all of you, but I'm sure you've met adults who also don't know anything. And you're like, who trained you? And the answer is, no one did.

And so now they're adults. And so like, you have to think about people becoming adults when they're kids so that you go, hey, I don't want them to act like this when they're 47, right? And so I do need to give them a slap on the wrist or like, show them that they shouldn't touch a hot stove or whatever you have to do. Like, whatever your discipline style is.

Slava, bring me back to the book. I diatribed here for a bit because it's a little close to the heart just because I have to currently discipline kids that I love and adore and like, don't want to discipline. But they just don't know anything because they're children.

It's funny to see these things as an adult. Like, and I'm talking about as an adult who's processed the stuff, who's went to therapy. Who's moved on from a lot of the stuff.

But I can see how the sins of the mother and father have affected me and my step half siblings and other parts of the family. And understanding that, like my mother, what possibly could she have known about mothering if all the examples she saw was bad? Like, my grandma would beat her because her hair was too thick. Like, I'm the only son between my mom and my dad.

And I got mother's hair. And everybody else in the family on the other side was bald by 30, thinning hair. And I got really thick hair.

And my mom had even thicker hair, right? And when her grandma would brush her when she was a kid and it would get tangled, as it does, she would literally punch her in the head out of frustration. And my mom ran away from home, ran away, left home before she was 18. I think she was 16 or 17.

Then she had to make it on her own as a kid in the Soviet Union working as, I don't know what the right term for this is, like a drywaller, I guess. But she'd be the one who would put the tape and the, what the hell is it called? I used to be in construction. Yeah, the mud.

Thank you, gosh. And then she worked as a firewoman, as a firefighter, and she had a hard life. So I understand that leaving a chaotic household at 16, being thrown into the real world, did not prepare her to be a loving and kind mother to me.

Sure. So reading this book, and I'm about two thirds of the way through, and reflecting on what Debbie told us during her interview, it's understandable how unchecked trauma and unchecked immaturity by the parents will breed more traumatized, immature adults. So, but all that to say, I agree with what you're saying, but back to the book.

The next section of the book, the next few, I don't know, about 10 chapters, like I'm going to talk about two, three, and four and five here. We are thrown into 1940s Morocco. Yasmina, who's a Berber woman, a Berber young woman, is cast out of her home under the false pretense that she's infertile.

Her brother-in-law reveals the truth that her husband, Brahim, has simply found another woman that he prefers. So she's devastated, but she's too proud to show it. And then her brother-in-law takes her on a journey to Makaresh.

And it's like a couple day journey or a week journey. There's a whole journey that they go on. And finally, they get to Makaresh.

She's thrown in the train. And she befriends a young girl named Amira, who offers her plums and conversation. And Amira reveals that she's traveling alone to meet a husband arranged by her parents and is posing as a wealthy bride to impress her in-laws.

And then so these two young women, they bond over shared anxieties about the future. And when they finally arrive in Rabat, Yasmina is met by her new employee, Elis Moab. She's a pregnant woman.

She's a Jewish rich heiress, I guess, or I don't know, she's just a wife of somebody rich. And she is automatically mean and cold towards Yasmina. And in the midst of all this, which I found interesting, in the midst of this coldness towards her, Yasmina realizes that the Jewish family might be in grave danger.

Because guess who's around in Morocco in the 40s? Our friends, the Nazis. And they're, as they did for the rest of Europe in the previous decade, they're screwing up Morocco too with their presence. So those six chapters, we have the first chapter is Abigail, and then the next six chapters is Yasmina.

And we see that she also does not have a good life. Yeah. Yeah, it might be a little bit less abusive than what Abigail is going through, but it's still hard and traumatic in its own special kind of way.

It's different but difficult. Yeah, it's very different, but it's not like, oh, she has it better. She just has a different type of crap that she's dealing with.

Right. And I love what Debbie did here where she's got two timelines rolling through. And one of them is the 40s with Yasmina, and we're seeing her life take place.

And at some point, as I'm sure you're all aware, they cross, right? Eventually Yasmina comes to America and is the nanny at Abigail's house. We're not there yet, but just like that's coming, right? And while I was reading this, I was thinking about Yasmina, and I was thinking like, well, what would it be like if I was in a different country, estranged from my family because of some sort of nonsense rule, right? And not even the fact that she's a woman, but just like a nonsense rule of, oh, well, you got divorced, so you can't be with the family anymore. You got to go, right? And then you're going to a city you don't know to work for people that you've never met on a one-way ticket.

And that's crazy, right? We don't have to do that anymore. At the end of the day, if you fail, most likely you have family to go back to, even if they're not great. Or you have friends who go, look, I need some help right now.

Now, there are some people that are living life alone, right? And that's a rough thing. That's a terrible thing. But I think about this and I go, man, that's rough.

Yasmina had to be a badass, right? Not by choice, just because she was thrown into it. And so how do you survive that? And this is part of the journey that Debbie takes us on, is we follow Yasmina in her trauma of being divorced for another woman, the process of having the Nazis there, being thrust into a new working situation, being basically a sacrificial lamb at some point later in a couple chapters where she was trying to do something and the kids covered for her or the kids didn't cover for her and she covered for the kids. And then they found out later that she was not at fault for this thing.

And they come back to her because she's a really good nanny. This is all in Morocco before she comes to America, right? Like just hard, difficult stuff. And then one of the things that I told Slava before we started recording and that I really love is these are all first person point of view.

And so that feels unique these days. You've heard me say in other episodes, I want more, but getting the actual walkthrough of what is Yasmina going through? What is she feeling? What is she processing? What is she struggling with? Was kind of eye-opening, right? And same with Abigail. Like, hey, what's she dealing with? I told Slava when I read the first chapter, I was like, oh my gosh, I don't know about this book.

And this is chapter one, right? I'm like, I already can tell Abigail has to be the parent. She's 13. She has to adult for her little sister.

Her parents are degenerates. They're not taking care of anything. And it's just like, oh man, if her whole upbringing is gonna be just this jarring back and forth, like, hey, you're supposed to be the adult here.

But also like, I don't really love you because I'm fighting with you from her mother. And then her father, God knows what he's doing. I'm halfway through the book and he hasn't really shown up yet.

I'm sure that it's gonna happen eventually. But this is a really, both stories, this is very difficult. To Slava's point earlier though, super well-written for first-time author.

And I love and applaud people. Look, it's a labor of love. If you saw our PSA recently for indie authors, you guys put a lot of work into this stuff, whether it took you a month, you did like a NaNoWriMo-type thing that doesn't exist anymore, write your book in 30 days.

It's still the editing, then it's like putting your book cover together. It's all this stuff. Like, absolutely, when someone comes and knocks it out of the park, and Slava and I have both tried to write things, books that just haven't, we're just not apparently not very good at this currently.

We're not disciplined. That's what it is. You guys have heard me talk about it here and there and throw in a quip about the seven-year short story.

At the end of the day, like, full transparency, you know, I'm not disciplined enough to write it. And now, recently, I've taken on a bigger effort than I ever have in the last seven years. And an hour a day for the last, I want to say, two months, I have written.

And the last week, since this recording of this particular episode, I spent about two, three hours a day nitpicking every scene, rewriting it, rearranging it. So, we'll get back into paper roses here in a second. But really, you and I are just not disciplined.

And it might be because we're busy, and you have a lot of crap going on in your life. Great. But I am sure if you really wanted to, and I really wanted to, in the previous six years of this endeavor, I could have done the same thing I was doing over the last two months.

So, well, this is just on us. We're too lazy dudes, apparently. Yeah, well, it's a priority issue, right? It's a priority issue, yeah.

But you guys, like the indie authors that Jonathan is referring to, it is a labor of love, and you've taken the time to do it, so I applaud you. You blood, sweat, and tears went into the shortest and the least known of all the stories out there. It might have been that, but it's still a labor of love, and good on you.

Better than anything I've put together. Hopefully, that'll change. Hopefully.

So, part of the podcast here for us, if I can zoom out for just a second, is Slava and I both know that we're going to write our books eventually. And eventually, when we drum up the discipline. However, I really hope, we read three indie books this season that have just killed it.

Different lengths, different genres, and each one of them, first-time authors. And I'm like, man, if Slava and I can be half as good as this, I'm going to feel good about that. Right? They've just done such a great job.

We had Nicholas Keating-Casparo on for Vidalurium. We had Callie Sue on for, She Had Glass Eyes, and now we're having Debbie Shoah. Yeah, it's Schiavone.

So, Callie Sue Schiavone. Oh, yeah, thank you. That's her full name, yeah.

What did I say? Just Callie Sue. You forgot her last name. Oh.

But nobody's going to find her book if they just google Callie Sue. They go back and watch the episode. Look, you guys are fans.

Go watch the episode. Go support some indie authors, right? Like, that's why we're here. And then we got Debbie Shoah.

She's coming back on for the third episode here to talk about stuff. If you guys have questions, please drop them in the comments and we'll make sure she sees them, right? So, anyway, love the book so far. Love the jarring nature of it.

Love the first-person point of view. And I know it kind of feels like sometimes we rah-rah. And sometimes it feels like we're rah-rah.

And sometimes it feels like we're rah-rah about these books. But both of us just have tried to write a book and have failed multiple times. I think I've tried four or five different books.

I've tried writing a web series. I've tried... You guys, I don't know how many things I've tried to write besides short essays that have been completed and are of any quality. The essays, good enough.

Slava edited a couple of them for me. Zoo Bear, who was on some of our other episodes, also was another person that I had edit because you need some outside eyes on it, right? And it's hard. It's really hard to write this stuff.

So when you read a book this good from a first-time author, I want it screaming from the rooftops and tell people, look, I don't care if you're not looking to read about childhood trauma and processing it. Do it anyway, right? Like, just do it. It's really better than you might think because you're like, oh, first-time author.

Like, oh, I'm not sure. No, no, no. This is really good.

It is. And you don't have to read it to process any trauma, even if you are traumatized. But you don't have to read this to have some kind of cathartic experience.

You can just read it because it's a very interesting story. It's dark, it's jarring in the best way possible, and it's good. But let me just take one side quest because you mentioned how hard it is to write a book and you've tried, you know, five different books.

So I'm sitting down last week, this past week, because we're recording on Saturday, and my first chapter in, like, Word is, you know, double-spaced, 12-size font, is about five pages. And the inciting incident that starts out with the incident that gets my main character, Ed, all on his little journey, I have that. And then I have a bunch of stuff that happens.

Like, so him waking up, and then all the events preceding his waking up, which is, I'm not going to spoil it here because it still has to be refined. Jonathan's read part of it. All these events happen in his trailer that are abusive and jarring and crazy.

And then I have him, after the event is finished, I have him just sitting there, and his anger, and the way I wrote it, his anger was hot and useless. That was my line. And then as I re-read that, I'm like, you know what? This would be better if I put it as he's laying in bed, before he's pulled out of bed.

So I put it there, and then as I re-wrote everything else, I cut, like, 40% of what I wrote. And I looked at it, I'm like, it still gets across the same damn thing I did in, you know, 500 words, and I got it in 200 words. And that's how difficult that this can be.

And the discipline problem is to be able to come back to that over and over again and keep refining, instead of going like I have been for a long time. I'll get to that later. I'll get to that later.

Yeah, I need to fix that chapter. Yeah, I need to do... I'm, you know, I have nine chapters, and none of them are filled out because I have been like, eh, I'll get to it later. Anyway, I'm talking about myself too much again.

So I'll stop. All I have to say, writing a book is hard. Yeah, all I have to say.

Talking about it apparently is not hard, because I can, you know, sit here and pontificate like an asshole for the last 20 minutes. There's these threads conversations where people are like, the rumors are true. You actually have to sit down and write your book for it to get written.

Just things of that nature. And it's just like, yep, you do, right? But getting back into chapter eight, where we jump back from Yasmina to Abigail, where we... It's actually chapter seven, but yes. Chapter seven is where Abigail comes back.

Thank you, chapter seven. So we follow Abigail again, sneaking out for cheerleading practice, which her mother first signed her up for to help her out in some way for her balance, and then starts berating her because she's going and starts talking down to her. This is that devouring mother thing, right? Where the mother is never going to be satisfied and is never going to properly encourage the child, right? Everything they do is wrong.

And the mother clearly has a favorite. We see this in Cinderella, right? The wicked stepsisters, the wicked stepmother, the devouring mother of like, Cinderella can't do anything right, ever. Doesn't matter what she does.

And so she just beats her down, beats her down, beats her down, right? We see the same thing here with the net toward Abigail. And like, how do you expect a kid to turn out if that's all you tell them is like, they're stupid, they're a moron, I can't believe you're doing that. When you signed them up for practice, right? And then they're just trying to get out of the house to get away from you because you're not nurturing.

The darker side of that is not even her berating Abby for her mistakes, is when she starts to enjoy it after that and started getting good at it. She's like, oh no, I don't think you should go. And I'm paraphrasing a bit.

But yeah, you're like, so there's a jealousy towards your daughter, which is just insanity. And I know a girl in my life, a woman, she's no longer a girl, she's a grown ass woman. But when she was a girl, her mom would exhibit jealousy towards her because her dad favored her over her brother and the mom favored the brother over her.

And it was a similar dysfunctional situation. And this woman told me just a few little episodes, if you will, tidbits. And like her mom would do similar things and it was a lot more on the nose than what Nanette does with Abby.

But she would exhibit envy, ferocious envy and jealousy about her daughter's successes. Devouring mother is the perfect term for it. I don't know.

It's just crazy. But here, Abby again, after this incident, what we just described, she's again forced to act like a mother to Nikki because Nikki's like high or something. Remind me, the Wanderer in the Yard.

Yeah, she's like high. She's a child. Well, yes, yes.

And she's high on secondhand. I'm not blaming her for- I'm like, I'm exacerbating the point. The listeners, if they haven't read the book, where it's like she's a child who's high on secondhand smoke.

So like take a six year old and then like put them in a room of everyone hotboxing, just smoking. And like, that's what you get. She's high on nicotine.

Or weed, probably weed. Maybe. Nobody gets high on nicotine.

Well, nobody gets that high on nicotine. You get buzzed. And if you're a child, it's more so.

Because you have a small body. You're not supposed to- Sure. You're not supposed to breathe that in.

You're supposed to breathe in oxygen. I don't know. Look, I know, you know, you come from the Soviet.

So we'll let it pass. Whatever they do over there. Don't eyebrows me.

All right, buddy. Yeah, hey, when I was a kid, a cigarette and a black coffee was what I had for breakfast and a bologna sandwich. So don't knock until you try it, kids.

The half, a half a bologna sandwich. Because I'm sure you had a share. Because we couldn't afford the rest.

Which is true. All right, let's let's do some trauma bonding, audience. When you were a kid.

Oh, boy. Were you as were you poor enough to remember those big cans of pork? Like processed pork was literally just like, like spam, only worse. And they were big cans.

Off name brands. They were all metal. And they had printed black lettering on them.

And the front of it just had a pig on it. So for the illiterates, I guess, this is a pig. And you had to stand in line at whatever food bank was run by the welfare office to get him.

So somebody tell me the comments. I'm not the only one that had to do it. This was in Massachusetts.

So if you're from Massachusetts, do you remember eating pork out of a can? That was the size of a paint can. That was a that was a thing. Piggly wiggly? No, it was not.

This was like government cheese level food. It wasn't piggly wiggly. I'm trying to look it up here.

It was something you got at. This wasn't a donated the food bank. This was something that.

I don't even know. I don't know. Honestly, audience maybe help me out.

Maybe it was donations. But I remember it was a can. It was looked like a paint can, but it was actually like a like a, you know, like a. Like a regular can, like, you know, canned vegetables can.

I don't know. And it had no wrap around it. It was all just gray here.

Is it? Oh, let's find out. Is it this? No, it wasn't that colorful. But it was it was technically was that only had no color on it.

It was just a gray can with a black pig stencil on it. It was it was something else. If you if you fried it, it was half edible.

OK, well, I just know of the spam. Oh, spam is better than this. This is this is aspires to be spam.

But this aspires to be spam. Good Lord. Was it this? I'm like trying to identify this for for the audience because we were not wealthy, but I guess we weren't this poor.

Yeah, there it is. Oh, my gosh. There it is.

Literally took multiple searches while you were talking about this to try to find it. And this is like the only image that's coming up. Oh, there it is.

Yeah, baby. With natural juices. Oh, boy.

Oh, boy. All right. Well, are you done trauma bonding with the audience? Yes, I am.

I am. Good Lord. Oh, OK.

Back to the book. Back to the book. So that was roughly, you know, chapter seven, chapter eight.

We're going to attempt to get through like the first half. There will clearly be some broad strokes because we can't shut up. So mostly me.

Well, I went on some diatribes here, too. But hey, it's called the SideQuest Book Club podcast for a reason, right? Like if you've ever attended an in-person book club. This is just what happens.

You talk about the book. Somebody goes off on a tangent somewhere. So we're back to the book here because we take some broad strokes.

We don't know how to shut up. Mostly Slava more than me, based on a small argument we had off camera here of who wants to win the award for most diatribes, which is fine. But chapter eight gets into Abigail describing her friendship with Sierra and trying to fix her eyebrows and sort of the struggle of a girl who's been beaten down emotionally at home, trying to look pretty for the rest of the world.

Right. So and then like practicing with a henna tattoo and seeing a mistake on it, which, you know, upsets her mother. And then it kind of moves into chapter nine where they have Memuna and which is a celebration for Moroccan Jews.

Slava, do you have notes on that? I thought I saw notes on Memuna from your stuff or no. I know I didn't. I didn't make any notes on Memuna.

The only notes I made, if we ever get to it or want to get to it, is some of the historical aspects of Morocco. But I think that the flow of it, the flow of this is sans history for now and it's good. Yeah, Memuna is just a celebration.

It's akin to maybe Purim or a mix of Purim and Hanukkah. Memuna is a traditional Moroccan Jewish celebration held the day after Passover, marking the return of eating hamatz. Hamatz for non-Jews is just like leavened food.

So food that has yeast in it, right? It signifies a fresh start of spring joy, faith, featuring homes filled with sweet symbolic foods. And we see a little bit of that in the description that Debbie gives us about the party, about the fact that her mother feels more herself during the party, which was an interesting note. So the mother feels more, feels more herself.

And she insults Ben while trying to compliment him, which embarrasses Abigail because Ben is this like crush that Abigail has been bonding with. Abigail wrote a poem for Ben, but also she's trying to play it cool, right? She's trying to play it cool. And at some point, I don't remember if it's this chapter or not.

She's like, oh, well, we're just buds, even though she like clearly is not just buds. And I related with that for a variety of Australian reasons. I thought of you.

I thought of you. Shut your mouth. Don't think of me.

Everybody had this and I even had to friend zone somebody. Like, so it goes both ways. And some of us never had to friend zone people.

Not me. I've had to friend zone a variety of gals. It's not fun.

I've had to do it twice. One of it probably shouldn't have done it. I mean, now I'm 40 and happily married, so it doesn't matter.

But like, if you're going to dissect the event, shouldn't have done it because she was a sweet girl. And I think I was just too much of a chicken to go through it. And I was like, no, I don't know.

Maybe I'm just friends. And then the second time, like, oh, gosh, there was clearly not the right person for me. He was just a crazy person.

And I had to be like, nah, let's just be friends. And then she wouldn't back down. And I was like, actually, I'm gay.

And then she left me alone. Did you? I I did. I was like, she wouldn't stop.

And I was not interested. And it wasn't because of looks. I was just not interested because she was not an interesting person.

I didn't find any attraction to her and she wouldn't leave me alone. She kept pestering me and pestering me and pestering me. I was like, listen, I don't want to tell you.

Don't tell anybody I'm gay. I'm not interested. And then and then she was fine with it and she left me alone.

You sound like side from later in the book when Abigail's older. I missed that part where all the girls are getting after him. And then she's like, you should just tell them that you're gay.

Yeah, yeah. OK, goodness. Sorry, I forgot about.

So handsome. So the some of the girls that I this is like middle school. I was just friends with, you know, the people who were outcasts because I felt like an outcast.

One of these girls was in a wheelchair. And then she like told me that she had a crush on me. And I was like.

I what am I supposed to do? I'm a teenager, not even probably like 11 or something. What am I supposed to do, Slava? I didn't lie to her and tell her that I was gay. So in Chapter 10, we're going back to the book now.

Yes, Mina manages the chaotic mob household. Now seven children. Well, there always was seven children.

We're just picking it back up. Sorry, audience. And the pregnant Madame Moab.

And then she's kind of in her own little world, imagining herself being a French actress. The family faces financial strain because of Monsieur Moab, who can no longer get work because of anti-Jewish laws that have been enacted. And at this point, Jews no longer hold equal status with the rest of the other citizens of Morocco.

Subcitizens. Subcitizens. And they are barred from public life, essentially.

So just a quick note here to interject. This happens to Jews throughout history. For all of our non-Jewish listeners, this is a regular thing that happens, which is why all of our festivals are they tried to kill us.

We survived. Let's eat, because it's always they first start with a law that stops us from being able to work or stops us from being able to do something. Or if you go even further back to the Middle Ages, Eastern or European Jews were forced to lend money to Christians.

And then Christians got upset because we charged them interest. And then they started killing and burning down the ledger houses. It was like the end of Fight Club, the movie, not the book, where they started destroying the ledgers so that no one had to pay.

But they were also killing them. This happens to Jews all the time. So for those who don't know, this is a repeating narrative in history.

Sorry, Slava. Yasmina, obviously, is worrying about her job security as waves of Jews start to leave Morocco for Israel. And she dreams of cooking the perfect fish dinner to prove her worth and secure her place in the family.

And she goes out to buy a fish in the next chapter. She gets delayed. Her friend Amira is there and she is happily married.

The girl she met on the train is happily married. And Amira slips her an extra kopek or whatever it is to buy the biggest fish there on the market. It's a really big salmon.

Maybe it's not the biggest fish. Yasmina returns home and prepares the fish for dinner. But the meal is ruined when a busybody neighbor reveals Nanette's truancy to her parents.

And the reason the girl is truant is because she's Jewish and all the Catholic kids beat her and abuse her in school. Monsieur Moab fires Yasmina for negligence and she lives with her brother or goes to live with her brother. But only a few days later, a disheveled Monsieur Moab begins to beg Yasmina to return because Nanette refuses to eat without her.

Yasmina agrees to return and realizing at this moment that she's become indispensable to the family. So I think for her, for Yasmina, that's some source of comfort and encouragement. Because despite the nonsense, she's grown really fond of the kids and really fond of the girl.

Later, when she sees how Nanette is being abused, Yasmina is enraged and she wishes she could do something, but she can't. And we fast forward to next year. Madame Moab, this is chapter 13, delivers a stillborn daughter and this plunges the whole household into grief.

Yasmina has to take charge of the household. More so, you know, the chores and kind of the functions of the household than anything else. And she's doing this partly because it's her duty, but partly because she's distracting herself from the tragedy.

Right? And then this is where she sees Nanette being abused because she walks to pick her up from school, kind of reflecting on a cycle of life, her own lack of children. And Yasmina finds solace in kind of just nature and just walking around and viewing the world around her. And I could relate to that.

That was something that would help me escape when I would go for a walk to the library or go to a walk to the comic book store or wherever the hell I wanted to go as a kid, just to walk around in the woods. There's a little path behind our apartments in the woods. And when I escaped my house, I would find solace in just like staring at the trees, looking at squirrels, building a hovel or whatever the heck it was.

Nature somehow, quiet nature, let me put that caveat on it, quiet nature and being able just to sit and observe calms the spirit, man. Like so Yasmina's finding solace in that she arrives at school and witnesses her being bullied by a French girl who calls her all sorts of anti-Jewish slurs. Nanette fights back, but of course is unfairly punished by the headmistress while the bullies comforted.

And the headmistress is doing this because the bully's daddy is rich and gives money to the school. So your typical story. Yasmina takes a bruised Nanette for ice cream and tries to instill pride in her heritage.

And what I found so good about this is a Berber woman is comforting a little Jewish girl and telling her to take pride in herself and her heritage and not let it be like a burden to her. And Nanette expresses the desire to be white, to fit in and Yasmina is broken up about that. So I like that Yasmina tries to encourage Nanette to take pride in herself.

And you made a point here a second ago about her being a Berber. Can you step out a second and give us a definition of what is a Berber? Because at this point, my understanding, probably wrong, is that a Berber is really just an indigenous Moroccan person or something that's not a Jew. I don't really know.

Can you help us out here? Yeah, well, the Berbers are not Jews. They're not necessarily Arabs either. They're descendants of the Phoenician peoples from back in the, I want to say, 1700s BC.

And they did migrate to what is now called Morocco. And they had kingdoms. So the Berbers had like, I want to say three or four dynasties.

And sometimes dynasties were broken up into smaller dynasties and kingdoms. But you're exactly right. The Cliff Notes version of Berbers are descendants of Phoenicians who inhabited Morocco for a long, long time.

Okay, the indigenous people of the land that is Morocco now. Yeah. And I think in the 8th century when there was the Muslim conquest, a lot of the Berbers were assimilated into Islam.

But they're not Arabs by the scent. Does that make sense? Yep. Okay.

Tracking. And so it's important that she's the one encouraging Nanette because she's a different people group. But she's like, look, it doesn't matter what race you're from.

You should take pride in the heritage that you hold. Yeah. Regardless of what people tell you.

Which I think you and I both resonate with where it's like, look, I don't care if you're a Jew, non-Jew, whatever you're like, be proud of your heritage. It's a good thing, right? Like there are thousands of people who came before you to get you where you are today. And they put in a lot of work to get you there.

And unless you're somehow related to like King Henry or some sort of princely line, which 99.999% of us are not, then your family, your heritage, your ancestors put in a hell of a lot of work to get you here. So maybe be a little appreciative and show a little gratitude for getting this far, even if your life sucks. Because my life sucks regularly.

But you know what? Existence is suffering. Thank you. Moriarty? Nope, that's not the word that I wanted.

Dostoevsky? We zoom out to Hugh Jones, who is working with a couple friends at an army base. And for friends, a couple other soldiers who are African-American. And their names are Reginald and Cedric.

And they bond over shared dissatisfaction in the military. And they all three decide to steal a jeep to sneak off base to attend a party in the desert. Probably don't have to tell you that going AWOL is not okay when you're in the military.

You have sold yourself and time to the government for a while. It's time to continue to pay them back. So if they tell you you can't go, or if you don't ask, you're not allowed to go.

Did you want to chime in on looking up the... Memento Mori? Let me say it. It's the guy who wrote Stoicism stuff. Yeah, you're really helpful.

Thanks. We only read indie authors, not ancient authors. It's different.

So quick interruption. Memento Mori is a Roman phrase. Marcus Aurelius.

Well, yeah, but that's what people say, right? It's a Roman saying, and it's attributed to the philosopher and emperor, Caesar, Marcus Aurelius. But it's also rooted in Socrates and other Roman traditions. So who knows? We can just say Marcus Aurelius.

Slava doesn't want to give you credit. So feel free to roll in your grave. Well, he's dead now, so... Come back with your brigade and take it out on him.

I'll send you his address. Just ping me on Twitter or Threads. Threads.

I would imagine Marcus Aurelius is more on Threads than Twitter. For no reason whatsoever. Chapter 16.

Chapter 16. So they are driving the stolen jeep, Thriller Rebellion coursing through their veins. And they're kind of worried about returning the vehicle, right? But Hugh goes, you know what? Life is only worth living if you live it with gusto.

And kind of ignores all the consequences, right? And they get to the party in Chapter 17. He gets drunk and enjoys the attention of ballet dancers. Jonathan, have you ever enjoyed the attention of a ballet dancer? Movies? I don't think I've ever actually seen one in real life.

Pretty sure they're mythical creatures. Well, I've met one of these mythical creatures. Yep.

Before you were married? You know what? You mentioned it. No, during. My wife and I went to a belly dancing... Competition.

Yes. Yes, competition. You were... I took second place.

That's where I was going with this. And she didn't place at all. She was a judge.

She was a judge. And then you got married. Yeah.

I'm gonna... Something like that. Yeah, okay. No, our friend was a ballet dancer and we went to... Well, it was a private showing.

You know what? Doesn't matter. We're going. We're moving on.

You know what? On the ride back, the weather shifts and Hugh realizes... She got an OnlyFans now? This... You brought this up. This is your... This is your fault. No, there's no OnlyFans.

She's a professional woman. Only dancers. She happens to do belly dancing on the side and she danced for us.

Only bellies. Only bellies. Yeah.

So whatever. Hugh parties until he's, you know... With gusto. With gusto.

And on the ride back, he forgets where he is apparently. On the ride back, he realizes that he has sustained severe sunburn on his neck from his metal dog tags. And back on base, he is trying to hide the fact that this happened from his friends, but he is pretty effed up.

And then he's confined in Chapter 18. He's confined to the barracks of the severe burns and falls into depression and misses his girlfriend back home. His mom calls, but there's no... I guess there's no love lost there either because there's no encouragement from her.

And he, the way I would describe it, he feels some distance and coldness in her demeanor and her speech to him. Cedric visits him with a soothing oatmeal remedy. I love this crap.

Like everybody in our mothers and fathers and grandfathers ages groups all have these crazy freaking, you know, remedies? Like home remedies? And it's like, yeah. It's apothecary. I lump it all into apothecary.

Like when I got, uh, what was it? Not measles, um, chicken pox. Are those the same thing? I don't know. Chicken pox as a kid.

Measles kills you. All right. Well, whatever.

I'm still here, so I guess it didn't win. When I was a kid and I had chicken pox, we had to take like an oatmeal bath. Did you ever do this? No.

I just let it slide. I mean slide. Let it ride it out.

I had to ride it out. Let it slide. Well, and back in like the, uh, the late eighties, early nineties, you would have like chicken pox parties where you'd get the kids together so that they all get it.

So that everybody, like you guys don't, you younger generation, you don't, you don't get it. But would they, parents would used to get together, uh, so that one kid has it, everybody gets it because you can become immune to it. And so get it done quickly.

But part of the, the, the de-itching solution was to go into an oatmeal bath. It's similar to this thing here. Soothing oatmeal recipe remedy.

But this time it was like a full bath. If you're older, like us, what weird stuff did you have to go through as a kid? Remedy adjacent or remedy related. Not.

I think they understood based on the context, but sure. Yeah. Remedy.

Remedy this remedy. We have Hugh taking a bath, I guess, in oatmeal and the showing of kindness. This is what the interesting part of this section is.

The simple showing of kindness by Cedric is what helps lift Hugh's spirits. And after he recovers from his burn, he attends a new year's eve dance at the officer's club and spots a teenage Nanette Moab. And of course, instantly forgets his girlfriend back home and tries to charm her.

Yeah. He tries to charm her when they dance with jokes and she rebuffs him, but eventually she kind of warms up to him and that kind of marks the beginning of their little courtship. And in chapter 20, we have a severe jump from the late forties, early fifties to 1966 and Yasmina arrives in California to live with Nanette and Hugh.

Only to find Nanette dangerously thin and living in a small house. And Nanette reveals she failed to secure a green card for Yasmina, meaning Yasmina must work illegally to survive. She's always belly dancing.

Disappointed by Nanette's deception, Yasmina realizes the American dream she was promised is a lie. Don't we all feel that way? I, every day. Um, so the next chapter and that throws a tea party to welcome Yasmina, but there's still tension over Yasmina's immigration status.

It kind of lingers over the party, right? That kind of, it does linger over the party. And Yasmina reveals that her ex-husband's family were German spies, which clears her reputation back in Morocco. Despite Nanette's lies, Yasmina decides to stay and help raise Abigail.

And there's the connections. Yes, there it is indeed. So as the story continues, Yasmina struggles to adapt to the American suburban life because it is worlds different from Moroccan life.

There's like a scene where Yasmina is sitting down for dinner with the family and she's like, unsure what they're eating, but really what they're eating is like canned green beans and what else was on the table? Pork. Cans of pork. Cans of pork, just like you described, canned green beans.

And then that's like, oh, this saves a lot of time. And Yasmina's like, this is less than pig slop. Why would I eat this? And she's shocked that he was like, well, this is really good.

I really love this pork. It's delicious. The voice actor actually sounds like that.

It's amazing. Fun fact, if you didn't watch the author interview about the voice actor, if you do the audiobook, the narrator voice actually was friends with the character Nikki, but the real life sister, and was scammed by her. So Debbie purposefully chose her to represent the author, the narrator's voice for the book because she actually has a close connection with the perpetrator.

Can I say perpetrator? Circle of life, baby. Circle of life. Perpetrator.

So fun fact. Yasmina struggles to adjust to American life, right? And Nanette tries to help Yasmina find work, giving her a makeover for prospective employers, but they reject her because of her beauty. She's too beautiful or not beautiful enough.

And let me just say this. If you will not hire a maid because you think she will make your husband stumble, that's on you and your husband, not the maid. So the fact that you treat this prospective maid like garbage because your husband might try to bang her, that's kind of a you problem.

That's not Yasmina's problem. But the way that she gets treated, it's like, oh no, you're too hot. My husband will try to bang you if I hire you.

Please leave. Yeah. Anyway.

The 50s and 60s were a different time, or 80s, whatever it was. And the cultural aspect of that too, I suppose. Hugh, done eating the slop, suggests Yasmina work for non-Arab Americans, prompting another makeover, and it finally lands her a job.

Yasmina attends an English class where she meets the instructor, whose name is Bijan or something like that, an Iranian immigrant. And Bijan treats her with respect and interest, sparking yet a second romantic connection in this book, and it changes her future, right? Because she's finally, you know, she's on the road. Finds that group she's looking for.

Kind of, yeah. She's in a better place. It's such a cliche saying, but she's in a better place.

Of all the stuff she went through, and even with the Nanette's little, you know, immigration chess move, or whatever the hell you want to call it, she finds a guy that can replace her husband and treats her with more respect than maybe she's ever been treated with. So that sets her up for a new life, right? And that ends that timeline in POV, and we're jumping another 20 or so years into 1983, where Abigail discovers at the DMV that her license is suspended, and she had to go to the DMV because she lost her license, and her and her girlfriends are driving to Disneyland. She thought she lost her license.

Hence the air quotes. And so she goes to get another one, because they want to go to Disneyland, her and her girlfriends, and the clerk there tells her, hey, you owe hundreds of dollars. And then she realizes that it was Nikki who stole the license, and Nikki who, you know, portrayed herself as her sister when she got into trouble, and that's kind of where she... It begins to unravel how Nikki will continue to betray Abigail in the following chapters.

And her parents didn't do anything about it. And her parents don't do crap about it. So she travels to a small town where Nikki got the ticket to fight the fraudulent ticket.

It's dismissed by the judge. Later driving to Disneyland, she hears her mother on the Dr. Laura show asking for advice about Nikki's behavior. Dr. Laura convinces Nanette to file a petition to send Nikki to Juvenile Hall.

Do you know? Do you know Dr. Laura? This is a real person, and I heard her on the radio a few times. I have her book because my brother gave me her book and inscribed in the book cover said, you know... Why couldn't you be more? Why couldn't you make more of yourself? She said something like, hey, read it, absorb it, and strive to be better, signed my brother. Great.

Love that. So this scene, I sat in question while I was going through the book going, did this really happen? Because it'd be wild if it did. She was listening.

It did. If... Yeah. I don't remember Debbie telling us that.

Well, I think it did happen because Dr. Laura and her full name is Dr. Laura Schlesinger. She had a show, Dr. Laura. It sounds vaguely familiar, yeah.

And she would say shit like that. Right, but... I think it was hammed up to make Dr. Laura a little bit more obnoxious than she was. Not that Nanette called because I believe that part.

But that Debbie actually heard her mother on the radio. Oh, I think it probably happened. I would believe it, but that's like some cinematic stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's amazing. So we're going to have to ask her about that.

Yeah. So whatever. Nanette does what she is told by Dr. Laura.

And for context, Dr. Laura is telling Nanette that she's a degenerate who's not disciplining her child. A twit. Yeah, she uses the word twit.

I'm using the word degenerate. Yeah. And that she needs to actually discipline her daughter, Nikki.

And Nanette was calling in because she's attempting. She would like to reestablish her relationship with Abigail, but she has not found the way forward to do that. And Dr. Laura tells her that she's a worthless parent, basically.

Pretty much. Nikki is sent to juvenile hall, and she remains unrepentant, blames Nanette for all her problems, blames Nanette for her incarceration, which that's true, but she's incarcerated for good reasons, not because Nanette made shit up. Right.

Abby visits her, trying to encourage her to study. But Nikki, being Nikki, only wants beauty products and planning her escape with Abby. She's already planning her escape.

Yes. It was interesting, like, hearing this portion of it, because it took me back to the interview, and I was able to imagine it more vividly than if I was just reading this for the first time blind. I agree.

But going into it also for the first time, but not blind, going into it with the background that Debbie gave us, I was like, oh man, this is, this is, people, I've met people like this, and they weren't as crafty and as intelligent as Nikki. They were only aspiring to be half of what Nikki is in her, like, machinations, right? But nothing new under the sun. So the way people do things, just some people are better at it.

And I was just sitting here, sitting in a bus, listening to this, not here, and I'm like, man, what a mind screw this must have been for Abby. Like, from being the parent to Nikki, to going through everything she went through, to having that betrayal of Nikki, fast forwarding a couple of years, well, not a couple of years, oh, like a couple of months probably, because that, whatever that thing she had to sign to get her into Judy Hall, and fast forward a couple of months, still reeling from that rejection, and sitting with the person who rejected you, and they're oblivious to anything they're doing. They don't even care.

And they're telling you what they're going to do, and what they're going to do is betray, and connive even more. Yeah, well, this is like actual narcissistic behavior. Unlike today's social media that's like, hey, if someone treats you poorly, you just call them a narcissist, everyone agrees with you, and you call it a day.

Not the case. Nikki actually has narcissistic behaviors, and I think Machiavellian, if I remember correctly, um, because she like, refuses to accept any consequence, believes that the world should function the way that she is acting, not, with no set of laws, and, you know, then gets angry at anyone who stops her from doing that, right? And then basically gaslights her sister about her mom, even though, yeah, I mean, you guys read the book, right? So, or you're reading the book. It's just not good.

And we know, because Debbie came on the show, that like, Nikki doesn't change her ways. She stays a scam artist throughout her whole life. And like, you have to be really deceived to live a life like that, because you don't think that you're deceived.

You're just like, oh, well, I just need to go get another whatever to afford a new place to live, and some new money, and some new friends, and you just like, change who you are completely to survive. And Debbie's whole point here is it comes from childhood trauma. And so that's why she gives us Yasmina as a narrative of like, coming over to America, and Nanette, and how she was brought up, and, you know, where this all stemmed from.

And it's how we pass down, you know, quote, unquote, generational curses, right? Where, because you're not addressing the thing. On my little, you know, go back to the beginning of my diatribe. You're not addressing the stuff that you have to actually fix.

Because you know what? Shocking, just like the book's not gonna get written for Slava and I if we don't, God forbid, sit down and write the flippin' book. Your generations are not gonna change, and they're gonna have the same overeating problem, or poor work ethic, or insert your thing that you know that you do, because you've not chosen to address it. Yeah, absolutely.

And that's what Debbie's looking at here. Based on real events, a fictional story. Yeah.

Well, let's bring this plane down. Bring it home. Let's land this plane.

Bring it home. We're about halfway. This is a perfect segue.

What you just said is a perfect segue into the next two chapters, which is 27 and 28. And I think we'll just pick up on 29 next week. So the next chapter after she visits Nikki, she's suffering from nightmares.

And I think the nightmares have always been there. They become more pronounced. She's suffering from nightmares caused by family trauma, her drug-addicted boss, which we don't need to get into.

That's a whole other thing. Read the book, chapter 27, 26. Abigail, Abby, seeks therapy with Dr. Parnell, and she reveals to Dr. Parnell that her father was the drug dealer to her boss.

And that's a whole another thing. There's a lot of cool, interesting, dark themes explored there. And she begins to peel back the onion, or maybe the scab is a better analogy, where her trauma comes from, the source of her trauma.

And Dr. Parnell in the next chapter tells her, you have to move away from your family. You have to change geographical locations. And she retorts and says, well, I'll still be me in the other location.

I'll still be the person that I am. And I need to deal with that. And Parnell goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.

That's true. But sometimes you need to remove yourself from the crap that you're in in order to assess that crap better. And she takes this advice and transfers to a university 60 miles away.

And as she's leaving, she realizes that, yes, she can move physically, and she should because of how Dr. Parnell has encouraged her and what he has told her. But her emotional baggage will travel with her. And again, perfect place to end because here's where she begins to not... Well, she doesn't begin.

She begins to think about it more seriously. And she still gets into some trouble, which forces her to actually take some action more than just thinking about it seriously. But here's where I think is the turning point for her character, for Abby.

And so perfect place to end. She goes to New York University. We'll pick her up next week when she's in class and she meets the infamous Psy while all the girls suing over.

And... Psy should have just told him that he was gay. Yeah, sure. Take one out of Slava's playbook.

Her new journey or a journey to a new her begins in chapters 29 to the end of the book. And that's where we'll pick up next week. So Slava did read the book, but Dr. Parnell is a woman.

So he said he, but he knows that Dr. Parnell is a woman. Did I? I didn't mean to. Yeah.

But yeah. So yell at him in the comments. Please.

The thing that I want to mention here as my final thought though is this was a little jarring to me because we didn't get vignettes of this earlier on. So like we don't see a whole lot. This is the first part where I was like a little jarred where it's like away from the story, not in a purposeful manner like chapter one is because I'm like, A, I don't really recall like full details about the job she's doing until about right now.

Maybe they were there and it was just like a line here and there. I also don't recall the details of her father in enough detail for lack of a word to cover like, oh, hey, his father's deal, her father's dealing and specifically like this woman. And maybe that's purposeful.

But like this was a little like, oh, okay. The time jumps that happened earlier felt cohesive. This was jarring to me.

So I don't know if it was that way for you, but it wasn't. Where I was jarred a little bit was when Hugh's introduced and then we see the connection to Hugh in the subsequent chapters. But all of a sudden we got Hugh and I'm like, I thought there was only two POVs.

And then when I was researching the book, I was told there was five POVs and Debbie's like, no, you're on crack. There's only two POVs. That was a funny moment in the last episode.

Yeah. And so when I'm like, oh, so all right. So we were both wrong, Debbie.

Your book has three POVs. So I chuckled to myself. But that was the only jarring, if you want to use that word, thing to me.

But when we got here, I didn't see it as jarring like you did. I was just like, oh, this is just a first person POV. And in the mode of the storytelling, this is when Abby tells us about her dad.

And I get it, it's a book. Fair enough. And some people might critique it because, well, this should have been introduced to the reader, blah, blah, blah in chapter 15.

But I'm approaching this, this is Abby telling us a story. And here's where the story, she goes, oh yeah. And my dad also was the drug dealer to my boss.

Yeah, yeah. So that's how I read it. And it was fine to me.

The Hugh part didn't catch me off because I'm familiar enough that we're already jumping around. So like, why not introduce a new character? I just kind of like bought in where it's like, oh, maybe we'll get a few of them. I know that you made the silly comment in the last, in the interview with her, where you're like, well, hey, there's five POVs.

And she's like, nope, there's two. Well, listen, whoever wrote that stupid review on Goodreads, they said it was five. Well, I think she commented on that review.

She's like, oh, I read this review and it was like glowing. And then I read it again and it seemed like maybe they didn't actually read the book. Which was really funny because.

That was pretty hilarious, yeah. I bet that's gonna happen to you and me too, so. Oh, probably.

Anyway, that's the first half of Paper Roses. Be sure to pick up a copy. Join us for the second half.

We got two more episodes on this. We're gonna finish the book next time. And then the third episode, we'll have Debbie herself on to talk about the book in more detail.

So stay tuned. Can't wait. We'll see you guys in the next one.

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