Maybe you know a Marjorie Moore; maybe you are one. She’s dauntless, desperate and a little bit delusional. Yet her insatiable desires and misguided antics shed light on our own search for escapes — and search for self — and perhaps that is why we cheer her on wholeheartedly.

Marjorie Moore always wants more — and as a result, often feels she ends up with less. Forever searching elsewhere, she is consumed with wanting, or in her opinion, needing. Feeling trapped by her town and her family, she escapes through shopping, pill popping, and fantasizing about a possible affair with a friend from high school. Her credit card debt “forces” her to sell prescription drugs — which she secures at her receptionist job at the local hospital — to her dysfunctional friends. As her web of lies at home and work unravels, Margie struggles to become present in her own life.

Astute and provocative, Grotheim’s prose captures many of life’s dichotomies — duplicity versus authenticity, recklessness versus stability, and searching versus finding — in this moving debut novel.