Odd Girl Out

Laura Landon arrives at college carrying feelings she has not yet found a comfortable way to understand. Her attachment to her roommate Beth becomes the centre of a relationship that challenges the assumptions surrounding them. Set against the social constraints of the 1950s, the novel follows the possibilities and pressures of loving another woman when conventional futures appear already mapped out. Laura and Beth do not approach those possibilities in the same way, and their differences complicate the intimacy they share. This early work in Ann Bannon's Beebo Brinker Chronicles places a young woman's desire at the heart of its story of belonging and self-discovery.