With its desperate acts and dire consequences, Nell Peters's tale of a woman's life in northern Wisconsin is a remarkable story, full of the sense and sound and flavor of a time and place rarely visited in books. Nell's tomboy childhood, her businesslike initiation into sex on the eve of her departure for the WACs in 1951, her resulting pregnancy and return home to a life sharply at odds with small-town conventions, her struggle to keep her twin sons, and her disastrous sexual liaisons with men and women alike are recounted in this funny, gritty, and wildly candid book. “What a story! . . . the power of Nell’s story is her remarkable candor. As if she were talking to her closest friend, she shares her most intimate thoughts and experiences.”—Frank Denton, Wisconsin State Journal " Nell's Story is as raw as a Wisconsin winter; its bright, bold honesty chills to the bone."—A. Manette Ansay, author of Vinegar Hill "For Nell Peters, life is a garage sale, full of treasures amid the tough times. Gutsy Nell is a witty and earthy raconteur."—Karen Kringle, author of Vital Ties “As a fascinating exercise in obscure lives retrieved, as a joint effort in painful and exultant memory, this rich memoir has the playful seriousness and inventive charm which characterizes the work of Robert Peters, joined in this case with his sister Nell.”—Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler’s List "Courageous and important writing."—Merry K. Anderson, Book Lovers The year was 1951, and Nell Peters, just out of high school in the north woods of Wisconsin, was about to join the army. Feeling woefully unworldly, she asked the undertaker's grandson to initiate her into sex before she ventured off. She wasn't in the WACs long before she found herself pregnant and heading home to face the kind of adventure she hadn't looked for. An outrageous fortune, but of a piece with Nell's whole story, from her harrowing birth in a snowstorm to her current occupation running a perpetual garage sale to benefit disabled veterans. Sometimes funny, sometimes gritty, always wildly candid and sexual, this is a remarkable account of a woman's life lived in extremity. Growing up on a poor farm scratched out of woods and swamp, Nell-her father's "favorite son"-had learned survival skills. Early the mother of twin boys, with their father nowhere in sight and precious little means, she needed those skills as never before. Nell tells her story with disarming frankness, relating her struggle to keep and raise her sons as she moved from one menial job to another-washing laundry, flensing mink, picking over berries in a cranberry plant, scavenging local dumps for metal to sell-all the while facing unwelcome doubts about her role as a mother and place as a woman. From an early age, she wondered about her own sexuality, but it was only after a brutal marriage and four more children that she finally sought a woman's companionship-and this too had disastrous consequences. Throughout the book, Nell's brother Bob-whose own Wisconsin childhood is told in Crunching Gravel-offers here and there a word of observation, interpretation, encouragement. The result is an intimate autobiography, full of the sense and sound and flavor of a time and place rarely visited in books, a portrait of a woman at odds with the conventions that governed so much of her own-and women's-history. Nell Peters lives in Eagle River, Wisconsin. This is her first book. Robert Peters is professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of more than thirty books of poetry, criticism, and plays, including Crunching Gravel: A Wisconsin Boyhood in the Thirties and For You, Lili Marlene: A Memoir of World War II.