ARC Arrival: Blue Jean Baby by Sally Parmer

Blue Jean Baby: One Girl's Trip Through the 1960's L.A. Music Scene by Sally Parmer

Publisher: Sally Altman

I received this book through Bostick Communications.

About the book: Blue Jean Baby by Sally Parmer aims to unveil the truth about the sixties, showing how the beauty and inspiration of that decade is offset by war, riots, loss and oppression.

The 1960s were a tumultuous time of peace, love and misunderstanding, says author Sally Parmer in her uniquely personal novel, Blue Jean Baby. Contrary to popular belief, says Parmer, the youth in the sixties were actually an oppressed culture that had not yet morphed into the socially-freed individuals of the seventies and early eighties. Parmer was a teenager in Los Angeles during the sixties, and her exploits cast an honest light on what Parmer calls "the most wonderful and the most terrible" time of her life.

From chronicling her start in the L.A. music scene as a singer/songwriter and then as a groupie, to her abusive relationships and home life, Parmer shows how music saves her, and how after mothering a rock star's child, she finally finds her new calling in musical theater. Filled with watershed sixties' moments and insider views about the music scene, Parmer means this to be a book not just for those who remember the sixties, but for those who need to know what it was really like to live it.

According to Kirkus Discoveries, Parmer "tells her story without glamorizing or romanticizing it. And without a drop of remorse, self-pity or false humility. 'There will never again be a decade so remarkably transitional, terrifying and beautiful as the sixties,' she says, and it rings true." (from Bostick email)

About the author: Sally Parmer writes for and performs in musical theater and teaches the arts. She holds degrees in composition, theater arts and Shakespeare, and has won several awards for her stage plays and screenplays. A paid songwriter since the age of 15, she has written more than 50 plays, edited several magazines and published two novels, a raft of textbooks and a dozen self-help books. (from Bostick email)

Blue Jean Baby
Publisher/Publication Date: Sally Altman, April 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4392-2982-8
190 pages