The year is 1983. It’s a time of both mullets and glam, Bowie and the Smiths, and for twelve-year-old Robyn: rusty old vehicles, terrifying dogs, and grease-stained car guys. Robyn’s dad has just uprooted the family from the clean streets of Orange County and plopped them in the middle of the California High Desert to fulfill his lifelong dream: to own a junkyard.

At first, the new business is a lark, but soon Robyn is hawking auto parts amidst a motley assortment of fugitives and refugees. Too young to know better, Robyn misses that the people around her may be slightly dangerous. Without any real role models and lost among kids her own age, Robyn fakes her way through her teen years by mimicking the only adults she admires: soap opera stars and characters plucked from Danielle Steel romance novels. But when the rise of meth use takes hold of the area, a new flicker of danger threatens to strike its match on the Saunders’ junkyard kingdom.

Told in smiling vignettes, filled with daydreams and vulnerability and just a hint of self-deprecation, Junkyard Princess is infused with compassion for the blue collar and empathy for the underdog. Saunders Wilson’s debut memoirella explores familial bonds and inherited histories, empty gas tanks, and that sweet spot of redemption that only comes from a life of observing and choosing differently.

Junkyard Princess

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