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Feminine Products Kindle Edition

5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 4 ratings

Everyone’s got personal baggage, but Rusty Scanlon thinks she’s carrying more than her fair share. Owner of a trendy boutique in the outskirts of New York City, Rusty has an eye for fashion and a gift for messing up her love life. She doesn’t trust men. They’ve all abandoned her – the first being her carpenter father, who ran out on her and her mother when she was only six years old.

When she meets Walter Margolis, a guy who adores her, she thinks she has it all. Not so, she discovers when she tells him she’s pregnant and he suggests a paternity test. Rusty doesn’t know what to make of Walter’s reaction until he reveals the details of the accident he thinks he caused as a teenager, and the guilt that has tormented him all his adult life.

When a smooth-talking con man puts two and two together, ‘by the way’ mentioning that he once knew Rusty’s father, and also her mother – they apparently had a ‘thing’ some years back – she realizes he’s after something. She decides it’s time to find out the truth, and find her father. Until she does, she can’t fully commit to the life she hopes to share with Walter.

Rusty’s emotional rollercoaster ride is full of twists and turns that teach her and those around her about losing love and finding it, and what it means to be a family.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Rita Plush is a writer, interior designer, and instructor of the decorative arts. She lives in Queens, New York. Her short stories have appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Iconoclast, Passager, The MacGuffin, and others. She is the author of the novel Lily Steps Out, and a short-story collection titled Alterations. She is available for readings, book clubs and interviews. For more information, visit www.ritaplush.com.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01FZX77WU
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penumbra Publishing (May 20, 2016)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 20, 2016
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1234 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 219 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 4 ratings

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Rita Plush
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5 out of 5 stars
4 global ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2016
    There are many stories that focus on the abandoned child who overcame obstacles and made something of his or her life. Rarely do such inspiring stories explain the accuser’s side as Rita Plush does in her second novel, Feminine Products.

    Rusty Scanlon, a 39-year-old owner of a Long Island antique shop, is having a baby. But just when she is ready to celebrate this magical moment, her boyfriend, Walter, cowers at the thought of raising a child. Though seemingly selfish on the surface, Walter still harbors decades-old guilt about his little brother’s death in a car accident. He fears his child will suffer a similar tragedy. Despite this, Rusty loses faith in Walter, even after he begs to marry her. He promises companionship now, but will he get scared again and abandon her like her father did when she was a child?

    Soon after, Rusty meets a man named Woody who is looking for her father due to a failed business deal. Something is off about Woody’s pretenses as a former business partner as he is desperate to find Jack Paul Scanlon. Rusty has an urge to beat him to it. Having tried and failed to search for her father on the internet, she reluctantly turns to her mother, Nadine.

    Like her daughter, Nadine is also an independent businesswoman and a fighter. Rusty attacks her mother with questions about the past from the abrupt end of communication with her paternal grandparents to whether Nadine looked for Jack Paul. The marriage’s demise was a culmination of two unprepared young people with religious differences.

    As Rusty tries to piece the mystery of her father’s disappearance while being on the fence about Walter, the story turns the clock back ten years.

    Jack Paul has “a growing unease that he is not living his life forward, but stepping over familiar ground, going nowhere.” More and more his family is on his mind but his daughter is a grown woman now and may want nothing to do with him, especially Nadine. Although he tries to move forward with his decision, the past is still present in his mind.

    When Jack Paul is looking to plant roots alone in Las Vegas, he runs into a former buddy, Hank (disguised as Woody to Rusty), who is known to run real estate scams. Jack Paul finds a booklet of his scams in multiple cities. One of the deals has Nadine’s name and Jack Paul rips the page out of the book and skips town. Hank wants it back.

    Jack Paul hits the road and stops in Sedgwick, Indiana where he becomes a shop teacher at a high school. His students are a stand-in substitute for fatherhood. When one of his ‘sons’ asks Jack Paul to fix his sister’s dollhouse, he can no longer keep running. Rusty had wanted a dollhouse as a child. Jack Paul builds one for her and is determined to find his daughter to give it to her, with Hank sniffing his trail.

    Feminine Products is the continuing story of Rita Plush’s debut novel, Lily Steps Out. Unlike her debut novel, Plush’s characters are more rounded with layers of human frailty. The most compelling character was Jack Paul, who changes from a resigned deadbeat dad to a man who wants to genuinely repay his debts to his family. A debt of love. Without defending his behavior, the story explains the mental state of denial and how easy it is to push away painful decisions to the back of the mind, covering them up with addictions, sex, money, power or any number of substitutes. But we can only run for so long. At some point one has to face regrets not with shame but with integrity in order to be redeemed.

    Monique Antonette Lewis, founder of At The Inkwell, is an annual reader of the James Jones First Novel fellowship. She lives in Denver.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2016
    You don't just read a story by Rita Plush. You live it. The story pulls you in and the rhythm of the words holds you there. Rita's words, like Rita herself, are a gift - alive and wonderful!
  • Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2015
    Rusty and Walter, Jack Paul and Nadine. Characters you can relate to and feel for. Lively and sensitive, Plush wins you over from the beginning in this fast paced story of love and loss and then love again.
  • Reviewed in the United States on November 6, 2015
    Move over Susan Isaacs. Fellow Long Islander Rita Plush gives us a sassy female protagonist who spouts wisecracking girlspeak, gems of feminine gumption, and knows Gucci from Pucci.
    One person found this helpful
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