Books

Marin: The Place, The People

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by Jane Futcher

Marin County in California, whose western shores are flanked by the Pacific and whose eastern shores are formed by San Francisco Bay, has been satirized and stereotyped, and the so-called Marin life-style has entered into contemporary mythology – hot tubs, peacock feathers, marijuana plants on the redwood deck, bean sprouts on the salad. Now, the actual Marin, as it is and as it was, is celebrated in a beautiful book that does full justice to the place itself in all its astonishing variety – sea, mountain, ranch lands, isolated villages, commuter suburbs—and to the remarkable diversity of people fortunate enough to live there.

Prologue

The sweeping spans of the Golden Gate Bridge reach northward toward Marin County, their orange cables brilliant against the hills beyond. Far below is the mile-wide channel where San Francisco Bay joins the Pacific Ocean. To the east is the widening mouth of the bay, punctuated by an island of rock —Alcatraz, once America’s toughest federal prison, now a tourists’ mecca; to the west lies the Pacific. Click to Read More

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Reviews

“The text and photographs are superb; we feel that your book has filled a definite need both for the residents of and visitors to Marin County.” Marin County Historical Society, 1981

“There is information here, and it is, at least by my rigorous spot checking, accurate. Futcher convincingly blends old Marin with the hot tubbers; her comments on the Marin City tragedy are sharp and to the point.” Stephanie von Buchau, Pacific Sun, 1981

Promise Not To Tell

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by Jane Futcher

Meet fifteen-year-old Simon. He feels as if he can’t do anything right. He’s been kicked out of prep school and constantly battles with his parents. Shipping him off to Maine to live with his older cousin is his mother’s idea of a way to turn his life around. Simon doesn’t agree. But that’s before he meets Laura.

She is beautiful.The most beautiful girl Simon has ever seen. And she needs him. Laura is living with a dark secret she can’t tell anyone, except Simon. Simon has to help her. It’s the one thing he knows is right, even if keeping her secret makes everything go terribly wrong.

Chapter One

I’d been home from boarding school onlya few days when it happened. I’d forgotten how badthings are around my parents. My mom gets mad at my dad because his business ventures fail, and my dad yells at her because she doesn’t like sex. When things get too tense, Mom disappears on her horse or flies down to Santa Fe where her best friend lives. Life is calmer for a while, but things deteriorate when Dad’s in charge. He tends to space out on his household duties and forgets Johnny’s soccer practice and Nathan’s doctor appointments.
The atmosphere at home wasn’t exactly light whenthey kicked me out of school. What I did was pretty dumb, since we had only three more days before the term was over. We’d finished exams, and we were waiting around to get our grades and go, to graduation. Click to Read More

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Reviews

“Few young-adult writers have succeeded in capturing the dialogue and internal voice of confused young men with the authenticity and power of Promise Not to Tell, by Jane Futcher…As Simon lurches from childlike needs to adult responsibility, he is by turn sullen and persecuted. He’s rebellious but dependent.”
-Patricia Holt, San Francisco Chronicle, August 1991.

“Some secrets are too dangerous to tell–and too dangerous to keep.” From the Young Adult Library Services Association, which selected Promise Not to Tell as a 1992 Quick Pick for Reluctant YA Readers. Quick Picks are selected because they “have emotional impact and are gripping and memorable.”

Dream Lover

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by Jane Futcher

Kate Paine is a quiet lesbian artist. Ellie Webster is a married, seductive socialite who always has a woman “on the side.” Twenty years ago, the two women had a brief affair at boarding school. Now in their forties, they’ve met again. Suddenly, love flares up anew, and neither Kate nor Ellie’s lives will ever be the same.

Chapter Three

Kate tumed onto the live-lane freeway, heading south for Turkey Run. Three weeks had passed since the strange evening in Mill Valley with Ellie and her friends. Despite the dazzling house and the sexual innuendos, seeing Ellie again – so suburban and even matronly – had been almost anticlimactic. But since that evening something inside Kate had shifted. Kate’s energy and concentration increased as she painted. She’d begun a new Gina painting from photographs, a Rousseau-like dream portrait of both of them standing side by side, a jungle of birds-of-paradise, bougainvillea, and tiger lilies closing around them.
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Reviews

“Kate Paine knows she’s playing with fire when her lips touch those of her high school crush, now married with children. But she can’t stop herself. In this page-turner, Futcher makers her point brilliantly: There’s no flame like and old flame.” Sandra Scoppettone, author of Let’s Face the Music and Die and Trying Hard to Hear You.

“Jane Futcher’s novel, Dream Lover, is absolutely wonderful – compelling, humane, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, beautifully written and wise.”
— Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird and Hard Laughter.

Women Gone Wild

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by Jane Futcher

The adventures of two city slickers who leave their urban footprints behind and learn to love rattlers, bears, pot growers, two dachshunds and each other. Anyone who’s ever dreamed of chucking it all and moving to the country will find Women Gone Wild a funny, provocative and engaging story. And it’s all true.

Chapter One

Looking for Land in All the Wrong Places!

We stood before a shingled shack that had been described in that day’s classifieds as a “see-to-believe creekside getaway near the Russian River, with guest cottage and private redwood grove.”

The creek, now barely a trickle, apparently ran through this house in the winter, which might explain why the entire structure listed to one side. The redwood grove was a single looming tree growing so close to the foundation that its roots had hoisted the garage six inches off the ground. We could almost hear the buzz of happy termites munching on the floor joists. Click to Read More

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Review

“I loved this book — it’s funny and genuine, informative and entertaining, an easy read (and one that’s hard to put down once you get started on it) thanks to Jane’s honest, humorous and conversational style. I laughed out loud at some points, chuckled at others; I shook my head in shared understanding reading some of the passages, thought about some things in a new way reading others. By the end of the book I felt as if I knew these women and their friends, and I had half an idea to just run up to Cherry Creek/Willits to say ‘Hi!,’ and maybe take a dip in their pond. It’s a wild ride these women took (and are still taking) and I’m so glad Jane Futcher shared it with us all in this keeper of a book.” — Mel, an Amazon reader

Crush

| janefutcher

by Jane Futcher

It wasn’t easy fitting in at an exclusive girls’ school like Huntington Hill. But in her senior year, Jinx finally felt like she belonged. Even her dream of going to art school in New York City seemed more real every day. And best of all, Lexie wanted her for a friend. Beautiful, popular Lexie, who could have anything or anyone she wanted. The other girls said it could never work – Lexie was too spoiled, too demanding. But just being near Lexie made Jinx feel dizzy and scared and wonderful at the same time.

Chapter One

Our friendship began on a clear, crisp October after- noon one month after the start of senior year. The Warren Commission had just announced that a single gunman, not a conspiracy, had assassinated John Fitzgerald Kennedy. In Jackson, Mississippi, the public schools were integrated without violence. And in a few weeks, the names Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Baines Johnson would be posted in every polling booth in America. But at Huntington Hill, it was the day before the second hockey game of the season, and they had put me back on the team. Click to Read More.

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New introduction by Dr. Marny Hall

“Originally published in 1981, Crush became an instant bestseller in the lesbian community, where reviewers and booksellers praised the novel for its engaging characters, dry wit, page-turning plot and moral sting. The book was among the first novels written in the voice of a teenaged girl upended by the exhilaration of new love for someone of her own sex. Caught in the thrall of attraction to the beautiful and bad Lexie Yves, Jinx Tuckwell hovers on the edge of ecstasy, teetering dangerously close to what she calls ‘the deep end.’”
Dr. Marny Hall, clinical psychologist and author of The Lavender Couch and The Lesbian Love Companion

Reviews

Praise for Jane Futcher’s Crush
“The emotional facts of this novel ring true. Jane Futcher has tried to present the confusing, terrifying dilemmas that accompany any step out of the narrow band of acceptable behavior that society tolerates.”
— Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina, in New York Native

“The characterization is outstanding; the hurt, bewildered Jinx; her loyal roommate; and the smooth, calculating headmaster. Lexie is a superb portrait of a fascinating but unreliable and dangerous personality.” — The Horn Book magazine

“A good ear for dialogue and a good eye for a scene and a good memory for the sickening incomprehensions of adolescence.” — Helen Vendler, professor and literary critic for the New York Review of Books, in a letter to the author