Is This Me? (The Is This Me? Trilogy Book 1)
Anita opens the door and flees, screaming as she runs toward the river, a man chasing in hot pursuit.
A true story about a quintessential ‘good girl’ raised as a fundamentalist Christian beside picturesque Lake Macquarie in New South Wales, Australia. Anita’s idyllic life is turned upside down when her family leave the lake to become missionaries in a chilly and remote Tasmanian town. She attends a dark freezing church in the middle of nowhere, presided over by a farting priest. Anita sees her first gun and becomes engaged to her first boyfriend.
She is told a secret that shatters her existence in Tasmania, then struggles to pull the pieces of her life back together as she flees to Sydney. She endures clandestine toe licking, a gash to the head, an Italian boyfriend’s creepy father, and some very awkward first dates.
Glimpses of her tortured soul drive her to look inside others to understand herself. She approaches strangers and photographs them—a gorgeous tattooed woman on rollerblades, a pierced man in a wheelchair, and an artist with an unlikely connection. While she struggles to find her place in the world, each of these stories seems to be a piece of her own.
This is a tale of searching for love, friendship, approval, and understanding.
Is This Me? is the prelude to an astonishing story that is continued in Revenge of the Wilting Flower.
Revenge of the Wilting Flower (The Is This Me? Trilogy Book 2)
Part two of Anita Horan’s memoir (of which Is This Me? is part one).
A true story. She’s a fundamentalist. Her beliefs are everything. When she begins to have doubts and tries to free herself, those beliefs conspire to destroy her…
Anita Horan is devoted to her church. It gives her everything—faith, love, and hope. Best of all, it keeps her safe and separate from a wicked and sinful world.
The church insists she put God before her children and all outsiders are bad. These beliefs begin to feel cancerous to Anita, yet she has no way to cope with her doubt because her totalitarian religion forbids doubt. Her sinfulness poisons her and she succumbs to a mysterious illness. Anita seeks medical test after medical test in a desperate search for what is wrong with her—she could lose everything, including her husband and daughters.
Her sanity slips away as she sets out to prove she’s a good person and not a sinner. She cake-stalks a father and his children and tries to make new friends in a big, scary world. A group of local women sense she doesn’t belong and bully her with pack-like ferocity, determined to destroy her fractured soul.
Anita must make a choice. Be free or be forced into a straitjacket? Death seems so much easier.
This book is part two of the Is This Me? Trilogy but it can be read as a powerful, standalone story.
Plastic Girl
Anita Horan, or Anita from Australia, as she refers to herself, is a complex powerhouse. Anita is known for her relentless one-woman war on plastic in the supermarket aisle, but how did she become an ‘accidental activist?’ This book offers a tantalising glimpse into her childhood spent in a fundamentalist religion, and the mental safety that strong faith provided for her. That was until she lost her beliefs and her identity crumbled. Anita tries to pick up the pieces of her life while stumbling into awareness about our collective addiction to plastic. There’s plenty of drama, with saboteurs trying to destroy her work, attacks from social media trolls and angry vegans challenging her integrity. All the while she tries to be a leader while secretly fearing human interaction. Her journey climaxes after three years of tireless work. Anita, a self-confessed nobody, makes her first appearance on Australian television. Anita wins a sweet victory, both with her war on plastic in the supermarkets and with her own self-acceptance. Is this the end or the beginning of a new chapter?