From the moment fourteen-year-old Kathy decides to lose her virginity and reels in her prey, she is headed for trouble. One cold, raw March night, parked in a car on the outskirts of town with four boys she thought were her friends, she finds it.

This is the story of a young girl - the oldest daughter in a Catholic family of six children - struggling to find her proper place in the world. Suddenly as 'the earth blossomed with men and boys', Kathy grasped her path towards power and freedom. But girls who break rules in small ... Read moretowns like hers are expected to pay a high price for their transgressions.

In this disturbing and powerful memoir Kathy reveals how she stepped out of that car forever altered and how she learned to fight back after being labelled as a slut and ostracised in her own neighbourhood. Always aware that her ambitions were bigger and more complicated than the suburbs she grew up in, Kathy was determined to come through and to transform her fate.