Too Close to the Falls

The extraordinary and moving true story of a modern girl trapped in a gentler age...It is the mid-1950s in Lewiston, a sleepy town near Niagara Falls, famous only for the invention of the cocktail. Divorce is unheard of, mothers wear high heels to the beauty salon and television has only just arrived. But with no siblings to provide role-models; a workaholic father chosen by most of her class as Lewiston's present-day saint; a mother who looks the part of the perfect 50s housewife but refuses to play it; and a gambling-obsessed best friend, Roy, who is 30 years older, perhaps it's hardly surprising that Cathy grows up a little eccentric. Especially considering that the family doctor's prescription for her hyperactivity is a full-time job in her father's pharmacy - at four.Cathy is rarely out of trouble whether it's asking why seeing Elvis below the waist is a sin, stabbing the school bully with a compass, or delivering Nembutal to Marilyn Monroe. And her highly unusual adventures, set against a hilarious backdrop of conventional smalltown life, make for compulsive reading.