the story of theresa wray is not all that unique. although she was toted as the next sylvia plath amongst the feminist poetry circuit, her potential eventually fell flat. a girl who grew up in the midwest, feeling trapped by her oppresively christian family, she made a name for herself with her writings that were described as 'poignant' and 'cutting right to the bone'. a young girl with that kind of talent was destined for greatness and she came close. a scholarship to ucla was provided for her, and she moved from her farm town to the big city. her skills were nourished by the faculty at the english department and she soon released her first and only novel. the book was considered a sleeper success, the kind of thing that was a critic darling that developed into a cult following. it was soon after this that theresa met her future husband and her career would take a nose dive.

meeting james was the beginning of the end for theresa. a whirlwind romance followed and soon she was pregnant, something she hadn't planned at that point in her life, but she was so in love with james it didn't seem like such a bad thing. bronte was born in the middle of a heat wave, and theresa and james couldn't be more proud to have a beautiful baby girl in their life. until things started to get a little tricky. for one, james convinced theresa to get married, it was only the right thing to do after all. after theresa had raged against the machine that was marriage, she lost a little bit of her crediability by agreeing after much debate. then, after bronte was born, james insisted that theresa stop working to take care of the baby. again, after wearing her down, she agreed to his conditions and soon found that her talent and passion had fizzled away.

bronte, who preferrred to be called lila from the time she could take, grew up in relative comfort. her father was a hollywood executive, working behind the scenes, taking care of numbers, who made enough money to take care of the family for the rest of their lives. but, falling into the typical spoiled brat trope, lila hated all of it. but most of all she hated her mom for selling out so completely. being a housewife to a man who couldn't keep his pants zipped and couldn't help but make crude jokes in front of their friends during lavish dinner parties at their home didn't impress lila. she hated her mother for being such a joke, a complete and total fake. so she acted out to get back at her, the misplaced anger of a young girl driving a wedge between mother and daughter.

a brat through and through, lila found herself involved in low level criminal activity. she wasn't doing well in school, too much talking back to her teachers even though she always showed herself to be a bright and quick learner. the wasted potential was something all too familiar to theresa who found hard to make lila see the mistakes she was making but she wouldn't listen. eventually the problem got so bad that she arranged a summer away from california. it worked, lila came back with a new resolve to get her life back on track and she enrolled in college. her newfound academic spirit resulted in an almost laser focus on her studies.