Stretch Marks in the Moonlight: A Tale of Dancing with the Scars

Irreverent, poignant, amusing: Stretch Marks in the Moonlight: A Tale of Dancing with the Scars is a memoir of Rebecca Barker’s survival as an only child left alone with her drunken, washed-up Vaudevillian child-star mother when her father drops dead in front of her at age nine. The stream-of-consciousness format tells her story of self-doubt as a child and the consequences of making decisions as an adult based on her two competing role models: her indomitable, wheelchair-bound grandmother versus her mother, a constant instiller of the 1950’s notion that a woman couldn’t survive without a husband. These are stories of co-dependence, ruthlessness, money, independence, and resourcefulness—some raw and unrelenting, some downright wet-your-pants funny and full of startling candor. Blast-from-the-past song titles incorporated into each chapter title will evoke bittersweet memories for every baby boomer who slow danced to “Sea of Love” and knows the answer to, “Say kids! What time is it?”