Cindy Burt-Kinney came into the world early, weighing less than four pounds, and went home from the hospital in a shoebox. She has been proving people wrong ever since. She bought her own motorcycle when girls were not supposed to ride, came through a head on collision at nineteen, built a log cabin for her mother, and became Plainville’s first paramedic, man or woman.

When Cindy was growing up, there was a dress code for school, for church and for nearly everything else. There were rules about who a girl could be and what work she could do, and gay people lived quietly, because being found out could cost you your job. She wrote this memoir for young people today, so they can see how good they have it, and so the people who lived through those years are not forgotten.

Whether you love a good memoir, care about LGBTQ+ history, or simply enjoy a plainspoken storyteller with a sense of humor, Cindy’s story is an honest, warm look at a life lived truthfully. It is a love story too. Cindy and her wife Linda have been together for 50 years.