Excerpt from SWEET TEA AND CLEMENTINES
(Novel - Completed Draft, Under Revision)

I was named for my grandmother, Clementine Margaret McGraw.

When she was young, Clementine Margaret went roller-skating on Friday nights. She bought a car with her own money that she earned working the lunch counter at the five-and-dime. She turned the young men’s heads with just a tilt of hers and scandalized the young men’s parents with her independence. 

Clementine Margaret was wiry and small. She didn’t suffer nonsense or cruelty. Her house smelled like green sunshine. She hung her laundry in the wind and laughed like a lion.

As for me—Clementine Rose Sutter—by the autumn of my senior year, the only head I’d ever turned was my own. I spent more time in my thoughts than in the world. I curled up in blankets and looked down at the ground when I smiled. 

But still.

My grandmother was sweet tea and roller skates and overgrown gardens. I was frozen riverbeds, knit scarves, hot mint. 

Still.

I was my grandmother’s girl, through and through.