Chase Banter has always been about risk avoidance, but parenthood has changed all that. Among other things, she’s embraced a writer’s life, joined the board of the Lesbian Illumination Institute and fomented rebellion within the PTA.
When she and her BFF Lacey butt heads over the Institute, Chase decides it’s high time she prove once and for all that she is a changed woman. Her daughter, Bud, is an eight-year-old filmmaker, and will document her mother’s fearlessness, once she figures out how to focus past knee caps. Chase proves she can visit Urgent Care and not wash her hands afterward. She can skateboard, teach people how to drive and—to the surprise of many, including herself—she can gift wrap anything.

All these changes can only lead to one thing: the Gift Wrapping National Finals. How hard can it be, after all? It’s not as if she’s going to jump out of a plane or anything like that.

Saxon Bennett’s tongue-in-cheek take on Chase Banter’s quirky lesbian life won a Golden Crown Award for Family Affair. Marching to a Different Accordion was an instant bestseller.