It's 1971 in Connecticut, and sixteen-year-old Sharon's parents think that, because she's a girl, she should become a clerical office worker after high school and live at home until she marries and has a family. But Sharon wants to join the hippies and be part of the changing society, so she leaves home and heads to California.
Upon arriving in California, Sharon is thrown into an adult world for which she is unprepared, and she embarks on a precarious journey amid the 1970s counterculture. On her various adventures across the country and while living on a commune, with friends and lovers filtering in and out of her life, she realizes she must learn quickly in order to survive-as well as figure out a way to reconcile her developing spirituality with her Catholic upbringing.
In this colorful memoir, Sharon reflects upon the changes that reshaped her during the 1970s women's movement, and how they have transformed society's expectations for girls and women today-and, through it all, shares moments of triumph, joy, love, and awakening.
Industry Reviews
2022 Memoir Prize for Books Winner in Adventure
2021 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Winner Memoirs (Historical/Legacy)
2021 IPPY Awards Bronze Winner in Autobiography/Memoir III (Personal Struggle/Health Issues)
2021 National Indie Excellence Awards Winner of the Sponsor's Choice Prize
2021 National Indie Excellence Awards Finalist in Memoir
2020 Best Book Awards Finalist in Autobiography/Memoir
2020 Best Book Awards Finalist in Women's Issues
2020 International Book Awards Finalist in Autobiography/Memoir
2020 Readers' Favorite Book Awards Finalist in Non-Fiction: Women's
2020 CIBA Journey Book Awards Finalist
"This illuminating coming-of-age account chronicles a young woman's counterculture journey. Dukett’s revealing memoir effectively captures the restless disillusionment of many members of the generation that came of age during the ’60s and ’70s."
-Kirkus Reviews
“. . . you can almost feel the author sitting next to you, telling her story as an aunt or grandmother would.”
—Readers’ Favorite (5-star review)
“No Rules is a compelling and complex memoir and a deep dive into intergenerational trauma, family, finding ourselves despite unconventional paths, and love in all its forms.”
—IndieReader
“Nothing better than an emotional dose of truth-telling to inspire a soul, and Dukett delivers!”
—Julie Cantrell, New York Times best-selling author of Perennials
“No Rules does more than pull us into the adventures of a girl who finds the courage to leave home and forge a life contrary to everything she has been taught. It is also a reminder that every girl has the right—and owes it to herself—to grow, learn, succeed, and become the woman she is meant to be, no matter how difficult it is to find her way and her purpose in a male-dominated society.”
—Victoria Zackheim, author of The Bone Weaver
“This memoir is filled with beauty and fear and fearlessness and courage and audacity and words to inspire all girls and women that life, as Helen Keller once said, is an adventure . . . Read this book. Give it as a gift to every woman who needs to believe in the greatness of her own life.”
—Amy Ferris, author of Marrying George Clooney: Confessions from a Midlife Crisis
“Beyond flawless exposition, Dukett’s memoir also offers an unflinchingly honest recollection of her years in late adolescence as a “hippie chick” runaway and in her competent story telling hands that is one hell of a story.”
—Corie Skolnick, author of Orfan and America's Most Eligible
“With No Rules, Dukett gives us acute reality around the teenage fantasy of being so mad at your mother you run away from home. Since it’s 1971 and dropping out is a generational pastime, her long journey to womanhood is peppered with the familiar signs of the counterculture times. . . . Relive those days, or experience it all for the first time at her side. You know you want to.”
—Rita Dragonette, author of The Fourteenth of September
“Colorful, adventurous, and transformative . . . unflinchingly raw and unapologetic . . . No Rules is a thrill ride of a memoir.”
—The Nerd Daily
“No Rules, like all great memoirs, grants the reader the feeling of time travel — immersing you in the body of someone who was there to witness a now-alien era.”
—Salon
“Readers seeking a memoir that embraces personal, socia
