title: Sex, Love, and Spirit: A Memoir
author:  Alexia LaFortune 
description: "There are no maps or guidebooks," Alexia LaFortune writes as she begins the "tales of womanhood" that drive this memoir's journey into the feminine. Yet she maps the landmarks of her inner geography like a seasoned navigator. The trek is personal, spiritual, universal, and utterly human. At once self-assured and self-conscious, LaFortune traverses the highlands, flatlands, and wetlands of love, heartache, insecurity, and faith, ultimately proving there is no better life-guide than the wisdom of experience. More than a map, this book is a beautiful selfless offering from mother to daughter. Baring heart and soul, exposing her innermost secrets, LaFortune imparts the greatest gift of all-the gift of knowing that every mother's and daughter's journey is a shared one. - Carmella Padilla, author of The Work of Art: Folk Artists in the 21st Century and El Rancho de las Golondrinas: Living History in New Mexico's La Cienega Valley. How Susan Doherty became Alexia LaFortune is a beautifully written memoir that will make you grateful to be a woman and more open to the possibilities that magic exists our everyday lives. Written as a love letter to her daughter, it's the kind of book you wish you'd had been given along with your Girl Scout manual and Emily Post. --Patricia Morrisroe, author of 9 1/2 Narrow: My Life in Shoes READ THIS BOOK, to remember your own youthful romances. Read this book to watch a woman carve her chosen path, and to witness the gift of story-in all its elegant and naked beauty-laid at her daughters feet. Women, read this book and see yourself. -Lisa Dale Norton, author: Hawk Flies Above: Journey to the Heart of the Sandhills (Picador/St. Martin's Press) Shimmering Images: A Handy Little Guide to Writing a Memoir (Griffin/St. Martin's Press) "I couldn't put this book down. It dug in deep, and wouldn't let go. It's a stunning read. A love letter from mother to a daughter, and truthfully, it's for all daughters, all our daughters. It's filled with messy, gorgeous, heartbreaking and heart-cracking truth. The thing about great writing, bold writing is this: it stays with you. Hounds you. Haunts you. Awakens you. Lingers with you. Alexia LaFortune is a great writer. This is a great book. I couldn't put it down, and I didn't want this book to end." --Amy Ferris, author, Marrying George Clooney, Confessions from a Midlife Crisis "What if you weren't a movie star, but you had a pretty rollicking life? And what if you were willing, for the sake of your soul and that of your daughter's, to spill the raw truth of your life, part secret and part sacred? This memoir of Alexia LaFortune's is that book. Sex, Love, and Spirit brings a life forged in the wild Sixties and Seventies to Baby Boomers of all ages. It's a good read, a reunion with self, and doesn't let us down. --Joan Logghe, Santa Fe Poet Laureate Emerita "This is a necessary book, an important book, and except for the fact that it is memoir it is reminiscent of the "new feminist literature" that was fictionalized by the likes of Marilyn French, Marge Piercy and Rita Mae Brown back in the day. This one is for all the boomer-girls who loved the bad boys and the wounded birds and especially for the ones who have daughters to warn. If you lived-really lived-through the last half of this century, you will relate to this memoir with the deepest nostalgia. If you were in a convent or under a rock somewhere, you will see what you missed out on." --Corie Skolnick, author, ORFAN and America's Most Eligible
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  Emitting that heaviest of sighs that denotes
  
  
  the gravely put-upon, Alexia Maccon rol ed
  
  
  herself out of bed and picked up her
  
  
  nightgown from where it lay, a puddle
  
  
  of fril s and lace, on the stone floor.
  
  
  It was one of her husband’s wedding gifts to her. Or more
  
  
  probably gifts to him, as it was made of a soft French silk
  
  
  and had scandalously few pleats. It was quite fashion-
  
  
  forward and daringly French, and Alexia rather liked it.
  
  
  Conal rather liked taking it off her. Which was how it had
  
  
  ended up on the floor. They had negotiated a temporal
  
  
  relationship with the nightgown; most of the time she was
  
  
  able to wear it only out of the bed. He could be very
  
  
  persuasive when he put his mind, and other parts of his
  
  
  anatomy, to it. Lady Maccon figured she would have to get
  
  
  used to sleeping in the altogether. Although there was that
  
  
  niggling worry that the house might catch fire and cause her
  
  
  to dash about starkers in ful view of al . The worry