In the first story of this collection, Paddle, free spirit Lucas Plumb in her battered up VW bus drives into and through the life of Paddle, a small town girl on the banks of the Mississippi River, leaving her life changed forever in the wake. After a shamanic journey, she hitchhikes to San Francisco and winds up on the streets of Berkeley in the 70ies. Next, in Roots in My Garden, we find Emily and husband Robin traveling from Akron to San Francisco for a chef's convention. On impulse, they drive up the coast to Sonoma County in an attempt to recapture a missing piece of Emily's childhood, one of her lesbian mothers from whom she was taken at a young age. In the third story, All for One, four girls, outcasts of small town America, the brunt of cruelty and derision, create The Radical Outsiders club that helps them survive childhood and connects them through life until they return as adults to clean up unfinished business, and bury one of their own. The fourth story, In The Light of KerKhar, follows Eema, an albino child of the Miwok tribe, who is captured and raised in another culture. Because of her colorless skin, she is both revered and feared. Years later, under threat of death to the unborn child she carries, she is exiled and journeys back to her homeland. The final story, Waltzing With The Azaleas, provides an inside look at what happens when you enter the world as the wrong gender. Cory goes through his own personal metamorphosis as she emerges into the woman she was meant to be. These stories are connected by the theme of the heroine's journey-women catapulted into the world, bumped, banged, and honed by the process. They return home (to a physical loca- tion, or a place of self-identity), transformed, able to tackle the unfinished business of life. This collection contains gay-and trans-positive material.