Heather Haldeman

Kids and Cocktails Don't Mix Heather Haldeman

What happens when life looks like nothing it's supposed to? Pudgy Heather, granddaughter of the Governor of California, lives in an exclusive gated community in Los Angeles with celebrities and political figures as neighbors during the Vietnam War-era. Life is easy and opulent, with parties where Kids & Cocktails Don't Mix. Moments straight out of "Mad Men." But when her father abandons the family to chase a wealthy woman, Heather, together with her glamorous mother Marilyn, and sister April, must find the grit to keep going forward.

This moving memoir explores machinations of gender and power dynamics in the 1960s and '70s as they unfold in Heather's family, including Marilyn's need to find a new husband, complete with a resume (bathing suit photo by the pool) and fancy new clothes. What other choice does she have? Meanwhile, cars are repossessed and the fashionable house they live in is crumbling to pieces. In Heather's young life, nothing is as it appears. As Heather comes of age, she must make decisions about how she wants her own life to look. Which of the many inheritances of her parents will she keep and which will she jettison?