Carolyn grows up fatherless and relatively poor in Ashland, a small community in rural New Hampshire, and title of the debut novel by Dan Simon. At 20, in search of a role model, the protagonist suspects she is doomed to repeat her mother's life, including an early pregnancy and a series of low-paying jobs. She has come to think of herself "to be a bit like smoke... a nameless silhouette, a shadow.... People like me know in our selves we might not love, or have enough love, or enough self, that ...