"Trouble began in 1963 . . . the age-old trouble." Unable to attend college, Beverly Ann Donofrio lost interest in everything but riding around in cars, drinking, smoking, and rebelling against authority. After her teenage marriage failed, Donofrio found herself at an elite New England university, books in one arm, child on the other. Then, furnished with ambition, dreams, and five hundred dollars, she took herself and her son to New York City to begin a career and a life.

An outrageous and touching memoir, Riding in Cars with Boys is about becoming middle-class and the compromises made between being your own person and fitting into society. But mostly it's a story of a teenage mother who, as her son grows up, becomes an adult herself.