Barbara Gillies

Chaos and Enlightenment in the Cheese Tent Barbara Gillies

Perfect families are boring! Linda Alexander admits she's completely clueless about life. She lives in Chicago where she constantly questions her urban home, her career, her abilities as a single parent, her music, and her Buddhist faith. However, she's not alone. Her artist brother Gordy questions his ability to make a living while their cousin Cheeto questions his sexuality. It's the Great Recession and all three of them are pushing thirty, living with their parents, and increasingly uneasy about a future where their college degrees no longer provide automatic opportunities for success. In addition to painful lessons on impermanence that rock them to their core, the cousins stumble into wickedly absurd situations that also teach them just how futile it is to struggle against structural and personal transformations. Trees in the forest may provide a very special healing medicine to help them cope, but they can't point the way on the path of life. It's only when the cousins discover long held family secrets that they truly understand just how complicated life can be and how the present is directly impacted by past actions. They soon realize the present is the only time they have any control over, and therefore, the only time that matters.