Good-Bye Def Leppard: I'll Miss Those Jeans($12.30Value)

Description

Amy Gaer is a busy working wife and mother with young twin boys and a precocious teenage daughter. After returning home from a hectic day at work, Amy greets her children and carves out a few minutes to listen to her daughter sing. A delicate, silky melody fills the air, and Amy's mind drifts back more than twenty years to a time when everything changed for her…It's 1992. Grunge is on the rise. “Hair bands” are fading. Amy graduates from college and despite a talent for music, she's determined to chase the corporate ladder. Returning to rural Iowa for the summer to live at home with her parents, all her plans shift when Amy meets a local farmer named Nick. A romance blossoms and suddenly the previously banal landscape becomes beautiful. But settling into a life with Nick is far more complicated than she expected, and she is faced with decisions that will alter her life forever.For fans of Emily Giffin and Sophie Kinsella, Goodbye Def Leppard (I'll Miss Those Jeans) is a lighthearted yet poignant tale about life, fate, and the difficult choices we make. Kirkus Reviews- "A captivating tale about growing up best suited for nostalgic members of Generation X." In Kramer's debut novel, a middle-aged mother remembers falling into a complicated romance in the early 1990s. Amy Gaer is a harried working mother. After a busy day, she listens to heryoung daughter practice for a music recital and recalls her ownyouth. Thus begins a flashback to Amy's early 20s that lasts for nearlythe rest of the novel. Readers meet young Amy as she completes whatmight be her final year at the University of Iowa. She's trying to determine what to do with her life: follow her dream of amusical career or choose something more financially responsible, such as law or business, as her parents hope she will. She returns to herchildhood home in rural Iowa for the summer, where she begins aninternship at a local bank and meets Nick Klein, who's in the process of getting divorced--and who quickly gets under her skin. As soon as hisdivorce is final, the two begin to date, but Nick hopes to keep thingscasual so that Amy won't feel reluctant to leave town in pursuit ofprofessional goals. The only thing Amy knows for sure is that meetingNick has made her choices much more complicated. As she tries to map out her future, she must navigate lingering, complex relationships from her past as well as surprisingly large doses of sexism in theworkplace. All the while, Kramer keeps the music of the late 1980s andearly '90s (such as Guns N' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" and PearlJam's "Even Flow") playing in the story's background--so much so thatsome readers may feel compelled to sing along. As the author transportsthese readers to the grunge era, she also explores difficult issuessurrounding social inequality, infidelity, and, especially,coming-of-age. Meanwhile, the romantic suspense and social calamitiesthat pepper the narrative keep it moving along at an engaging pace. AsAmy struggles to find the wisdom and maturity she needs to sort out herfuture, readers will find themselves in her cheering section. Stef Kramer is a writer and blogger who works as a CFO by day. She graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in English and from Creighton University with an MBA. An award-winning short story author, she was also honored as an Outstanding Woman in Banking by Northwestern Financial Review. She currently resides on a farm with her husband, two children, yippy terrier, and intrepid cat.