The story of a nineteen - year old girl in the 1960's who is growing up in the Paradise Trailer Park in Hixon, Tennessee. A few twists and turns leads her into murder, lies and betrayal but a few more twists and turns leads her to Paradise, found only where the heart lies in wait. Get your Signed copy today! Other options: Buy your copy! Amazon Amazon.co.uk Froogle Barnes & Noble.com Vera Jane Cook Dancing Backward In Paradise by Vera Jane Cook is a brilliant debut that explores the definition of happiness and tries to make sense of the unexpected turns that create the richness and texture of life. Grace Place is nineteen-years-old and lives in Paradise, the Paradise Trailer Park in Hixon, Tennessee. The year is 1966 and Grace is content exploring the back roads, swimming in the cold waters of Tennessee and dancing in the wind. When her life is thrown off track by a man named Lenny Bean, Grace becomes entwined in a medley of lies, murder and betrayal. Trying desperately to remain true to herself, while the life she has created begins to crumble, Grace is more determined than ever to change her destiny. “You’re going to New York City, honey” her mother told her. “It’s the only place I know of where things are so damn crazy and mean, so miraculous and exciting, so painfully alienating that you just might find yourself amongst the confusion.” Accompanied by the most unlikely of friends, Ginny Jo, (a girl who thinks she's the only lesbian in Hixson)Grace is on her way to New York City. The city that her mother had long ago told her was the only place where her life would become something worth living. There amidst the 1960’s world of civil rights, hippies and ambition, Grace begins living the dreams that her mother always held and that she never believed existed. A place that can only be called Paradise. Absorbing and compelling, Dancing Backward In Paradise poses the question: Can we find ourselves? Cook immerses us into a world so full of authentic characters and unlikely events, with a heroine so exceptional and genuine that we can only be inspired to find our own definition of paradise.         Excerpt If you drive up there near the state line, on the border of Tennessee and Georgia,you just might pass through my hometown, the Chattanooga suburb of Hixson. But you might not know you passed it, not unless you take the time to read the sign hanging near the highway. Most people only stop in Hixson for the cemeteries and the old Civil War battlefields around Chattanooga. I grew up thinking a trip to Soddy Daisy was living the high life. But it was beautiful country, no matter what Mama says. I remember the back roads mostly, and the trees. When I was small I’d spread my arms out as far as I could and I’d try to reach as wide as a tree’s branches. I’d dance in the wind, partner to the limbs of the old oak and the sugar maples. Trees seemed to be all the poetry I’d ever need. Country living in Hixson wasn’t always peace and quiet though, with so many highways going every which way. But back where I lived, the back roads were all over. They were mysteries that flirted with my sense of adventure. I never could walk by one without wanting to follow it. There wasn’t anything finer to do with an afternoon than walk a road. The narrow ones around Paradise were some of my favorite; they curved and twisted up into hiding places that I could keep hidden from everybody else. I’ll always think of country roads like that, seducing me onto nature’s unknown paths. Sometimes those country roads led me back where I began. Sometimes they took me so far away I’d have to hitch home. I never could sit still when I was young. Why, I’d be damned if I didn’t ruin the best pair of fruit boots I ever had running through Miles Canyon Creek,jumping over brambles that scratched the shit out of me and left my legs looking like I’d shaved for the first time and done one hell of a bad job.

Midwest Book Review
Dancing Backward in Paradise is the debut novel of award-winning theater actress Vera Jane Cook, about one young women's quest to find herself in "Paradise" - New York City in the 1960s, a place beset by hippies, ambition, and the turbulence of the civil rights era. At first, nineteen-year-old trailer park resident Grace Place enjoys amorous trysts with her lover, Lenny Bean, more than anything else; but urged by her mother to seek fame and fortune in New York City, she works as a cleaning lady for the wealthy Betty Ann Houseman. When her lover betrays her and seeks to steal Betty Ann's estate, Grace is shocked, yet remains intent upon fulfilling her mother's wish and seeing New York City with her best friend, Ginny Jo. Together they will discover unforgettable surprises in this Eric Hoffer Award-winning novel. Highly recommended.

Armchair Interviews
The setting is Hixson, Tennessee, in the mid-1960s, but this story could be set anywhere, with any dialect.

The story is the step beyond the "coming-of-age" period for Grace Henrietta Place, who has lived all of her life in Paradise Trailer Park with her parents and her brother. Her life has been uneventful, and she and the country are still clinging to the last remnants of their innocence. It's a small-town atmosphere where everyone knows everyone and relationships are complex, complicating and confusing. These are not genteel Southern people but earthy and unsophisticated folk who use explicit language.

Grace's mother has had one goal for her daughter--to go to New York and become an actress. For Grace, getting to New York requires much more than just saving the money to go. People and unforeseen events keep threatening her move to New York. Grace has a new boy friend, Lennie Bean, whom she finds is not only unscrupulous but may be planning a murder. She enlists the help of her mother and a new friend, Ginny Jo (who thinks she is the only lesbian in Hixson), to prevent the murder. Determined not to disappoint her mother, Grace and Ginny Jo, in a junky car with little money and a Chihuahua, leave Paradise for New York. Grace's loyalty, compassion and determination bring her into a new circle of friends in New York as she creates her new life.

The author introduces a parade of personalities that you will recognize--people that you will want to know and that you will miss. The life and richness she gives to the people of Paradise will take you in like a welcomed stranger. You will love knowing Grace, her family and her friends, both in Hixson and in New York.

Life has its tragedies, humor and mysteries, and this story has all of that. Some really good novels slip through the cracks, don't let this be one of them.

Armchair Interviews says: Dancing Backward in Paradise is a story you do not want to miss.