Parnassus Books is thrilled to welcome back Courtney C. Stevens for her new book, Dress Codes for Small Towns.
Billie McCaffrey is always starting things. Like couches constructed of newspapers and two-by-fours. Like costumes made of aluminum cans and Starburst papers. Like trouble. This year, however, trouble comes looking for her.
Her best friends, a group she calls the Hexagon, have always been schemers. They scheme for kicks and giggles. What happens when you microwave a sock? They scheme to change their small town of Otters Holt, Kentucky for the better. Why not campaign to save the annual Harvest Festival we love so much? They scheme because they need to scheme. How can we get the most unlikely candidate elected for the town’s highest honor? But when they start scheming about love, things go sideways.
In Otters Holt, love has always been defined one way—girl and boy fall in love, get married, buy a Buick, and there’s sex in there somewhere. For Billie—a box-defying dynamo—it’s not that simple. Can the Hexagon, her parents, and the town she calls home handle the real Billie McCaffrey?
Author Courtney Stevens delivers an honest, funny, and endearing account of a girl coming to terms with the gray areas of love, gender, and sexuality, while facing the opposition that follows.
Courtney Stevens grew up in Kentucky and occasionally lives in Nashville, Tennessee. She is a former adjunct professor, youth minister, & Olympic torchbearer. Her novels include: Faking Normal, The Blue-Haired Boy (Novella), and The Lies About Truth. As an educator and author, she visits schools, designs retreats, and teaches workshops on marketing, revision, character development, and Channeling Your Brave. When she isn’t teaching and scribbling ideas in a notebook, she’s probably menacing small children during laser tag, walking 500 miles, or carving something with a saw.
