Blue follows three roommates as they navigatelife and love in their post-college years. Tash Daniels, the former party girl,falls for deejay Aidan. Always attracted to the wrong guy, what happens whenthe right one comes along? Jason Woo, a lighthearted model on the rise, usesthe club scene as his personal playground. While he's adept at helping Tashwith her personal life, how does he deal with his own when he meets a man thatdefies his expectations? Penelope, a reserved and earnest graduate student slipsunder the radar, but she has a secret no one suspects. As the characters'stories unfold, each is forced to confront their life choices or complacencyand choose which version of themselves they want to be. Blue is a novel aboutidentity, friendship, figuring out who we are during the in-between phases oflife, and the search for people who get us. The characters in Blue show howour interactions with people often bump up against backstage struggles we knownothing of. Visual art, television and film, appear as signposts throughout thenarrative, providing a context for how we each come to build our sense of selfin the world. With a tribute to 1980s pop culture, set against the backdrop ofcontemporary New York, Blue both celebrates and questions the ever-changingcultural landscape against which we live our stories, frame by frame. Althoughfictional, Blue is grounded in interview research, teaching and personalobservations. It can be read entirely for pleasure or used as supplementalreading in a variety of courses in women's/gender studies, sociology,psychology, communication, popular culture, media studies, qualitative inquiry,narrative inquiry or arts-based research. The protagonist, Tash Daniels,originally appeared in the best-selling novel Low-Fat Love (Blue is set severalyears later). Blue can be read as a stand-alone novel.Blue is a joyful, inspiring and painfullybeautiful novel written by gifted scholar and writer, Patricia Leavy. NormanDenzin, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignI love it. Tash is so familiar and yet unique. Iget her discontents and I am rooting for her. I find the novel to be cool, hip,and awesome! It would be fantastic in any number of college courses. Youngadults should read this. BRAVO, Patricia Leavy! Laurel Richardson, Ph.D., TheOhio State UniversityAn engaging piece of public scholarship, Blueprovides rich food for thought about the pop culture landscape and how itsshapes our own stories. This will be a useful and fun teaching tool. SutJhally, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts at Amherst; Founder & ExecutiveDirector, Media Education FoundationPatricia Leavy, Ph.D., is an award-winningindependent sociologist and best-selling author.
