Angela the Upside-Down Girl is a grand tour - by turns meditative, stirring, and seriously funny - of spiritual and physical searches across the American North and South. The spirit of Angela herself, a well-known strip-tease artist working in Boston's Combat Zone, hovers over the whole book, and the author, too, gradually reveals herself - a woman in quest of justice, authenticity, and pedicures.

Angela opens with the story of the arrival in Yankee Boston of a somewhat sheltered, liberal Southerner. With three other young artists, Hiestand finds herself living in a low-rent seashore town with - as her first neighbor - Angela the Upside-Down Girl. Angela is an eyebrow-raising neighbor, but one who reveals herself on- and offstage as a worthy guide to the supple art of being human.

Hiestand stares hard at the way beauty and blight are often mingled, beginning with her first home, Oak Ridge, Tennessee - a town that nurtured her but also made the atom bomb. And when she embarks on a journey as a white parishioner in an urban black church, she encounters a tradition of faith and creativity that has transformed a nation.

Suffused with the joy of being alive, aware of life's mortal shadows, Angela the Upside-Down Girl is about curiosity and bravery, and the willingness to cross borders in search of one's humanity. As Emily Hiestand cultivates her world, she tries to stop accidents from happening. She keeps her eyes wide open. She has fun.