The trouble with fairy tales

"Plum Johnson, author of the bestselling, award-winning memoir about her parents, They Left Us Everything, turns her gaze toward her own fascinating romantic and creative history. This witty, energetic, surprising memoir explores the fairy tale models of romantic love that a young Plum, and most girls of her generation, absorbed -- of the prince who awakens the princess with a kiss, of the pied piper who irresistibly draws his followers close to the cliff's edge, of the tragic, damaged man who needs help -- but might turn out to be a terrible Bluebeard in disguise. These models shaped her life, but creativity has been an equally powerful influence. From the plays she wrote and put on as a child, through a college-age "improv" in which she slipped into the role of personal cook for a wealthy American, to decades of painting, inventing, and ultimately her revelatory, life-changing return to her first love, writing -- creation has been a life-force through joy and pain, triumph and terrible loss. The Trouble With Fairytales rings with wisdom, elegance, and hilarity, and will serve as an affirmation for all those who desire to write, paint, garden, invent, and create, but feel that they aren't "allowed," or that it is too late. Go forth and create; it might just save your life"--