KELLI BEAN WRITER
MISS IMAHO is a love story, a DNA of the American dream. If your dad is an alcoholic, womanizing Idaho car salesman with a porn mustache and beer belly, who idolizes Hugh Hefner and Rush Limbaugh, and would have killed to vote for Donald Trump for President had he not died of brain cancer at age forty-six, do you have a shot in hell at finding peace of mind and true love? This is a memoir about a girl raised in and by the most American of places, Idaho, not Sun Valley, the Idaho known to Los Angeles rich people, but the real Idaho that is real America. It tracks a childhood in country suburbia, a daughter of a car salesman, the psyche of our country, get ‘er sold and rolled. That America. Trump’s America. It’s about a former Miss Idaho, USA, one of the best and brightest from her small town Nampa, (which means PERVERT in Japanese) a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar to the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, who wins “Most Outstanding Student,” and, in spite and because of her genes, she sets out to conquer the world. FLOYD C BEAN is a Great Santini of Chevrolet salesman, a take-no-prisoners, buy-no-bullshit guy, whose parenting style is ‘Burn the Manual.” He hates femi-nazis, girls too big for their britches, anybody uppity, classy or full of it. He can read people like a shaman, knows the shadow side of everyone in town. He drinks with bikers named Barf, the neighbor named Chicken Man, (listed in the phone book as T.R. Ash), the King of the Gypsies and the local Mayor. He’s loud, sexy, funny, brash—he doesn’t sell cars, he sells the experience of buying with him. He’s also a raging alcoholic, a small town Jack Nicholson, a Belushi of a fella. “What a great guy,” people tell me, “Must be a laugh a minute with Floyd as a father!” At fifteen, I pull a gun on him. KAYE BRIGHT, a.k.a. MOMMA BEAN is poor white trash from Homedale, Idaho. She’s a feminist, a reader and writer. She’s shy and she’s uppity. She would’ve been a librarian if she hadn’t met Floyd. She’s a Quaker who doesn’t attend meetings. She loves Jews (Idaho’s only temple was burned to the ground by arsonists). And she yard sales (a verb). She is a righteous liberal in a red state married to a Rush Limbaugh wanna-be, determined to raise artist girls. She’s crazy mad for Floyd. Everybody loves FLOYD. Everybody fucks FLOYD. And MOMMA BEAN can’t leave him. And our heroine, KELLI—me—doesn’t fall far from that tree. Here’s a tale of a gal riding the bucking bronco of inheritance. It’s a romp, a sexy ride, as tawdry and raw as it gets, and an inquiry into generational inheritance. It’s a grand American love story about the fly-over state of Idaho, on of those places in our country the parenthesis of either coast’s high-fallutin’ folk had nary a thought of till Trump landed in office. It’s a story about fornicating and loving in a broken-down way, it’s about family and men and women and how we stand on opposite sides of the river and wonder, What the bejesus is he thinking? Why the hell isn’t she getting the dishes clean—what’s a man got to do to have a clean sink to piss in? What are we all doing here? How on earth do we love each other? As hard as I tried to not live out my family’s worst patterns, it’s a boomerang. I see girls just like me everyday come into the rooms of AA to get sober, and I see them—just like me—thinking because they came from shit, they are shit. This tale is their beacon. Come sit by me and listen to this tale. I’ll put my arm around you. I’ll make you see. I’ll make you laugh. I’ll make you burn, so glad to be alive. You’re not alone, you’re not shit because it’s a lie, inheritance, the sad story you’ve been telling yourself for a long time. From where I sit now, I see my past is the greatest gift I ever got. I paid sticker price for this wisdom and I’ll take it to the bank.