Rebecca Fish Ewan's illustrated coming-of-age memoir By the Forces of Gravity is told through drawings and free verse. Set in early-1970s Berkeley California Rebecca's story reflects on a childhood friendship cut short by tragedy. In an era of laissez-faire parenting Rebecca drops out of elementary school and takes up residence in a kids commune-no parents allowed!-and we follow her bestie Luna and their hippie cohorts as they search for love acceptance and cosmic truths. Full of adventure and heartache By the Forces of Gravity promises to pull you in.

Rebecca Fish Ewan is the founder of Plankton Press (where small is big enough) and creates Tiny Joys &amp GRAPH(feeties) zines. She is a poet cartoonist professor. Mom and writer and teaches in The Design School at Arizona State University. Her publications include work in Brevity Femme Fotale Survivor Zine and Hip Mama. She's also the author of A Land Between.

"By the Forces of Gravity is like nothing you've ever read. Rebecca Fish Ewan has invented a wildly unique new genre that will transport you to a wildly unique time and place where love and experimentation reigned children were intentionally left unparented and everyone it seemed spent their days chasing far-out trips.

In this vividly magical and terrifying world a once-in-a-lifetime friendship blooms between two girls.

At turns utopian and tragic By the Forces of Gravity will forever change the way you think about love childhood the meaning of family and what it means to be fully alive." -Ariel Gore author of We Were Witches

"Rebecca Fish Ewan's illustrated prose conveys an intimate look into life in Berkley in the 1970s. It resonates with the pure and all-consuming love of friendship revealing the complex truth of a girl abandoned by parents and society. Ewan's free verse is clear and immediately immerses the reader in the thoughts of young Becky Star Fish and the accompanying drawings deepen the emotional resonance of the book allowing us another way to access the thoughts and feelings of a narrator we can't help but feel affection for. I entered the story as a neglected twelve-year-old girl trying to find her way in a world that she didn't feel too young for. I entered this story as a forty-four-year-old mother wanting to rescue this girl and feed her something with sustenance. And I entered this story as a teenager consumed with that achingly vibrant love for a friend. An unflinching work of tender beauty By the Forces of Gravity is an intimate memoir to be savored re-read and shared with your own "soul friends." -Lara Lillibridge author of Girlish: Growing Up in a Lesbian Home

"Rebecca Fish Ewan's By the Forces of Gravity is a visually and emotionally compelling coming-of-age memoir. Her inventive prose and picture narrative recreates the tumultuous counter-culture movement in Berkeley California capturing the intricate psychedelic zeitgeist of the 1970s. Together the drawings and text weave an intimate story of a young girl finding her soulmate and mentor as they search for cosmic consciousness. This free-verse-comic takes us on an epic trip of alternative lifestyles sex drugs rock-and-roll loss and ultimately redemption." -Chip Sullivan author of Cartooning the Landscape

"Full of the raw honesty and complicated tangles of a young girl navigating the lost and found of adolescence friendship and the journey toward selfhood in 1970s Berkeley-the drawings as necessary and revealing as the doodles in the margins of her lessons." -Tyler Cohen author of Primahood: Magenta