Eliana Ramage is the author of To the Moon and Back, a Reese’s Book Club pick. She holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and has received support from Lambda Literary, Vermont Studio Center, Tin House, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, she lives in Nashville with her family.
At Lit Hub Ramage tagged eight "truly beautiful, inventive, and powerful novels and memoirs about ambitious women—singular in desire but breathtakingly expansive in reach." One title on the list:
Allie Tagle-Dokus, Lucky GirlRead about the other titles on Ramage's list at Lit Hub.
Lucky Girl is a hilarious and heartbreaking exploration of the messy contradictions between art, work, and ambition. LucyGardiner needs to become a dancer. Dancing alone in her bedroom won’t satisfy her, especially after Hollywood claims her for a dance competition slash reality TV show. As Lucy fights to achieve her dream, she sacrifices more and more of herself: her time, her friends, and finally her family to make art the masses consume.
Lucy finds a role model and a home with Bruise, an aging pop star on her comeback who like Lucy has given up her childhood to make her dreams a reality. But the closer Lucy is drawn into Bruise’s inner life, the more she sees that Bruise’s greatness is smoke and mirrors, a mirage she will never truly reach, leaving Lucy to ask, if this isn’t success, what is?
--Marshal Zeringue
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