Publisher's Synopsis
An adventure, a black comedy and a romance, this is the story of Eugenia (Jean) Clocker, whose birth challenges the balance of nature and her mother's capacity for punitive cruelty. Her name is shortened, but Jean's body resists all attempts to curb it and she grows into a girl of unusual size and strength. With the unwitting power to upset the order of things, it takes the chaos of war to bring the rest of the world up to Jean's level of disorientation. When the accidental bombing of her house leaves her orphaned, extravagantly scarred, but brilliantly alive, she finds herself ready to relish life, and all the strangeness and opportunity her unique appearance brings.
