The Year Marjorie Moore Learned to Live

Marjorie Moore always wants more--and often feels she ends up with less. Forever searching elsewhere, she is consumed with wanting, or in her opinion, needing. Feeling trapped by her town and her family, she escapes through shopping, pill popping, and fantasizing about a possible affair with a friend from high school. Her growing credit card debt "forces" her to sell prescription drugs--which she secures at her receptionist job at the local hospital--to her dysfunctional friends. As her web of lies at home and work unravels, Margie struggles to become present in her own life.

Astute and provocative, Grotheim's prose captures many of life's dichotomies--duplicity versus authenticity, recklessness versus stability, and searching versus finding--in this moving debut novel.