Cherry Bomb A Novel

Sixteen-year-old Mary Catherine Henry (nicknamed Mare) has endured sexual abuse by her father, abandonment by her mother, and neglect while in the care of dysfunctional foster parents, and she becomes a runaway in Macon, Georgia. An artist, Mare begins to decorate abandoned buildings and the local Catholic Church with colorful, sometimes controversial, graffiti that she signs with Cherry Bomb. A Rolling Stone photographer, a Macon newspaper reporter, and the local Catholic priest gain her trust and help her to obtain a scholarship at the Savannah College of Art & Design, where she and her mentor, the painter Elaine de Kooning, come to terms with their repressed pasts.