When the mother of three little girls commits suicide, their father wants more than anything to keep his family together. He remarries in haste and tells his daughters his new wife is their mother. The youngest, Laura, believes her mother must have gone through a kind of magical transformation.
Reversible Skirt is written from Laura’s perspective as a child sifting through remnants of her mother’s existence and struggling to fit into a community where her family’s strict rules are not the norm. When Laura’s father dies, her stepmother grows increasingly abusive, which propels Laura and her sisters into a lasting alliance.
Their father’s wish that they stay together comes true, although not in the way he’d imagined.
Here’s a link to the Reversible Skirt book trailer.
Reversible Skirt, won a silver medal in the 2011 Readers Choice Book Awards in the nonfiction-autobiography category.
What people are saying.
Reversible Skirt is the tender telling of a girl’s odyssey through an abusive childhood. The voice is honest. I feel as if I’ve known her all my life. – H.B. Reid, The Connected
Reversible Skirt is a thoroughly heartrending read. In her moving new memoir, author Laura McHale Holland takes the reader through the deepest recesses of grief, sorrow, and abuse – all from the fragile perspective of an innocent, unsuspecting child. What ultimately proves most impressive about Holland’s spiritual sojourn is that – despite the unchecked chaos of her upbringing – she perseveres through it all with an unbreakable, sweet spirit. Such unflappable strength is highly commendable – not to mention rare – and your appreciation of Holland’s genuine loving warmth is sure to grow by leaps and bounds with the turning of each fresh page. A highly recommended tale of learning to overcome the worst that life has to offer. – Karynda Lewis, Apex Reviews
As I read this book I felt it was written for me and when I finished it I realized it was written for the world. It has a guilelessness that is truly refreshing, mixing nostalgia with the pain of growing up. It also chronicles a different time, before it took a village to raise a child, a time of little fiefdoms where parents ruled and children had little to say about their decisions. Highly recommended. – Della Wanna
This is an amazing story of these three girls who believed that they were somehow responsible for their mothers death. I felt so much love for Laura and she was one that you just wanted to take and hold and hug for a bit. This is an amazing story that will catch the reader from the very beginning and hold their interest right to the end , a story that read once will grab you, read twice will give you a new insight that shows abuse can be dealt out in many ways besides physical.. It’s a book that I will read again. – Lynn of Springville, Tenn.
Laura McHale Holland is an eyewitness to the sad events of her childhood in this book: her young mother’s suicide, her father’s early death, her abusive stepmother’s tirades. Laura’s honest and wide awake look at the swirling world around her is skillfully drawn, so that we want to become her friend, to time travel back to those chaotic days and just hold her hand or play a game of checkers. Yet Laura’s message at the end, to take away, is that we befriend other children in need and know that they are watching and hoping. Such is the generous heart and compassion of Reversible Skirt. – Kate Farrell, author and educator
Laura McHale Holland’s characters vibrate with an authenticity and live force rare in nonfiction. She builds suspense and compels the reader to care about the everyday twists and triumphs of her quirky band of characters. She is a true writer of the heart. – Claire Blotter, performance poet
What impressed me the most about Reversible Skirt is how loving Laura McHale Holland was able to remain under horrendous treatment. A small child, unable even to manage the steps, crawls up the stairs to see a mother who will not look at her. A stand-in-mommy, unloving and uncaring, sets about to rule her world. Holland presents cruelty against a backdrop of nostalgia and you are reminded of things you wanted as a child, games you played, clothes you wore – and that some children live a different, unhappy existence. Three little girls live together, but are unable to relate as sisters until finally old enough to piece together the puzzle of what happened to their real mother. That is when the healing begins – to understand it is not they who are wrong. I liked those girls a lot. – Linda L. Reid, Touch of Magenta
Laura McHale Holland’s writing is riveting. I began reading her book on a Thursday night and finished it on Sunday! She engagingly invites you into her complex and compelling childhood. Put it on your ‘must read’ list. – Jill McGillen, Owner, Next Turn Consulting and Training
An engrossing narrative with haunting dream sequences and fascinating characters. I had to force myself to not peek ahead to find out how the author survived so dreadful a childhood intact. – Jo-Anne Rosen, web designer and publisher
