The release date for the English version of 'Mary Jane' by
Jessica Anya Blau is Apr 2022. If you enjoy this novel, it is available for buy as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Indigo, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, or as an audiobook on Audible.
Mary Jane, then fourteen, is a big fan of her family's Broadway Showtunes of the Month record club, cooking with her mother, and singing in the church choir in 1970s Baltimore. She is quiet, reserved, and bookish, so she is happy to get a summer job as a nanny for a local doctor's kid. A decent job, according to Mary Jane's mom. in a dignified home.
The front of the home may seem respectable, but inside is a physical and metaphorical chaos with takeout for supper and cereal, bumper stickers reading Impeachment: Now More Than Ever, and debris on every available surface. And even more troublesome (were Mary Jane's mother to know, which she does not): the doctor is a psychiatrist who has cleared his summer for one important job--helping a famous rock star dry out. The rock musician and his movie star wife move in a week after Mary Jane begins.
During the summer, Mary Jane gets a front-row seat to a world of drugs, sex, rock & roll, and group therapy. She also introduces her new family to neatly ironed clothing and a family meal program. Mary Jane, caught between the world she has always known and the future she has only just come to understand is attainable, will arrive in September with a fresh perspective on her goals and ideal self.