Two Girls in High Rafters: A Novel by Rick Schmidt

TWO GIRLS IN HIGH RAFTERS is a rough and tumble fiction account of a woman's life, 1900-1966, concerning how her life was affected by a nude photo that her and a best friend's fathers' produced just before WWI. The making of a "pornographic" cabinet card product designed to earn the dirt farmers a living in the depressed Sandhills region of Nebraska is where the story begins. The photograph gave chase to Mildred Conner's life, somehow pulled her into prostitution (for survival, some might say...), while her Black friend Sissy did equally less well (an early pregnancy-the death of her infant). The story begins with Mildred, 66 in 1966, being interviewed by a high school teenager, Donny Brooks, for his high school term paper, and soon it is apparent that Mildred's need to 'come clean' about all her misfortunes is positioned to supply stories and attitudes that most18-year-olds are unprepared to process. In any case, Mildred is committed to putting her life story down on the plastic strips that snaked through a Lincoln, Nebraska tape recorder in 1966.