No Rules - by Sharon Dukett (Paperback)

About the Book

At sixteen, Sharon leaves home to escape the limited life her Catholic parents have planned for her because she's a girl--and finds herself thrown into the 1970s counterculture, an adult world for which she is unprepared.

Book Synopsis

In this coming-of-age memoir, Sharon takes you with her on a nail-biting adventure through the early 1970s after leaving her sheltered home life at sixteen years old to join the hippies. Yearning for freedom, she lands in an adult world for which she is unprepared, and must learn quickly in order to survive.

As Sharon navigates the US and Canada--whether by hitchhiking, bicycle, or the back of a motorcycle--she experiences love and heartbreak, discovers whom she can and cannot trust, and awakens to the growing women's liberation movement while living in a rural off-grid commune. In this colorful memoir, she reflects upon the changes that reshaped her during that decade, and how the ways in which she and her peers threw off the rules meant to keep women in their place has transformed and empowered the lives of girls and women today.

Review Quotes

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, social, and cultural change and epitomizes the atmosphere of these times will find No Rules an intriguing examination of power, control, influence, and evolution. Its ability to capture the process of questioning and growth and the logical and illogical deductions that emerge during this process is particularly well done, and will lend to discussion as well as insights about the times."

--Midwest Book Review

". . . a great story, well told."

--David Crow, author of Pale-Faced Lie