High-tech heretic

Halfborn Woman is the story of Arlen, a painfully observant girl who comes of age in early 1970s Tampa, Florida. When her charming rogue of a father walks out on the family, everything changes, and her mother, Olivia, passionate and insecure in the best of times, now rides a terrifying slide between depression and rage. Arlen is left to play handmaiden and cheerleader to a woman who, feeling brutally rejected, now rejects her. Only in the aftermath of one of Olivia's increasingly frequent beatings can Arlen find something like the love she's been denied, finally cradled in her mother's…