When the daughter of an affluent family's true identity is exposed, she is thrown out of the house by her mother and forced to live on the streets of 1940s Los Angeles. Failing at every turn to find a home or a way to survive on her own, she finally receives a glimmer of hope that gives her one last chance. A surprising and truthful account of one young girl's harrowing journey into the seamy underbelly of Los Angeles darkest streets, Jerry Weeks's debut novel is a fascinating exploration of family and the deceit that tears it apart. Sarah is showered with love from her parents to the point of being favored over her older brother and sister. From this, she believes that she and her mother have a bond between them that can't be broken. When she inadvertently overhears her mother question her very presence in the family, it sets in motion a series of events that will challenge her basic beliefs and force her to see life in a way she never thought possible. Suddenly thrown out of her house at the age of fourteen and refused help from her grandparents and even her seminary teacher, she ends up alone on the streets of LA . After failing to earn money, first as a singer on the sidewalk and then as a beggar, Sarah quickly finds herself working as a prostitute for a brutally violent pimp. Seemingly without any hope for changing her life, let alone reclaiming the security of her home and favor of her mother, Sarah accepts her fate until a stranger offers her the wisdom to take one more chance at happiness. Challenging US government actions during the tumultuous years of WW ll, Weeks attacks the the legitimacy of the Japanese-American internment camps and exposes the harmful effects of radical religion as he weaves a tale of extraordinary depth and resonance to our modern era. Showing us that only through forgiveness can we get past the hurtful action of those whose love we need the most, "Mother, May I?" is a transcendent meditation on the power of the human spirit.
About the Author: Born in Los Angeles and raised in Southern California, Jerry Weeks was educated in public schools through high school and then attended USC where he received BA and MA degrees. During his career as an executive in local government and then in private business, he took creative writing classes at UCI and began writing short stories. "Mother, May I?" is his first full length novel. Based in Los Angeles during the last years of the Great Depression and first days of WW ll, many of the ideas for the events from this difficult time in US history are from stories repeated by his parents' and then researched for the accurate details of those events. While the main characters in the novel are fictional, the characters mentioned in connection with the City of LA, State of California, the US government and the internment camp at Manzanar were real and actually existed during the time frame of the novel. Weeks lives in Southern California with his family.