Trust Fall: A Not-Very-Magical Fairy Tale About the F Word is Tamara Kaye Sellman’s avant garde fictionalized account detailing a budding feminist’s coming of age during the twin ascents of modern suffragism via the ERA and ultraconservatism in 1970s America.

This unorthodox literary take on the bildungsroman motif gives readers a grassroots’ perspective on feminism through the lens of a young girl’s life as she navigates the political messages coming from the daily newspaper and Walter Cronkite in contrast to the equally political messages coming directly to her from across the kitchen table: the anti-woman ideas espoused by her Bircher father.

Illustrated with a magical godmother and designed to resemble a fairy tale in its telling, Trust Fall is GenX storytelling as it should be: irreverent, outspoken, off the hook, with no use for the traditional, commercial, or conventional. Trust Fall reveals how feminists are not made but born, that women’s rights aren’t a trend but at the heart of egalitarianism. No matter the obstacles, the desire for freedom for all persists no matter who’s in charge of writing history.

Trust Fall includes an overview of the John Birch Society, a Who’s Who list of feminism’s finest warriors, a contextualized social issues timeline, a badass progressive fairy godmother, a hat tip to Billie Jean King, and—perhaps most importantly—conservative advice on how to be a “good wife.” This is required reading for those needing a quick civil rights history lesson from the very mouths of the babes who lived through it.