Easy money

the long version

Eighteen-year-old Jacqueline (Jay) Winbourne has gotten pretty good at taking care of her father, a widower. She barely knew her mother, and never really learned to take care of herself. She and her father live together in a ramshackle Denver house, struggling to make ends meet. Or, rather, Jay struggles. Her father, once a promising playwright, now takes wild chances in the stock market, hoping to strike it rich quick. When everything goes to pieces, she flees to New York to see if she can make it on her own. But what kind of life can a young woman with no skills, who thinks she's mostly worthless, find for herself there? And what happens when she falls in love with a struggling musician too much like the father she's run away from? Easy Money, Barbara Wright's first novel, is the engaging story of Jay's search for what she needs to take care of herself when nobody else will. Like Mona Simpson's Anywhere But Here, it's the story of a young woman who's had to grow up too soon, and who must find in herself the strength to make it on her own.