Leslie Johansen Nack’s debut, Fourteen, received five indie awards, including the 2016 Finalist in Memoir at the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Before she started writing, she raised two children, ran a mechanical engineering business with her husband, took care of her aging mother, and dreamed of retirement when she could write full-time. She did everything late in life, including getting her degree in English Literature from UCLA at age thirty-one, only two years after she married for the second time. If you want to know when her next book is coming out, please visit her website www.lesliejohansennack.com and sign up to receive an email when she has her next release. She lives in sunny San Diego and enjoys sailing, hiking and reading.

New York 1915, Marion Davies is a shy eighteen-year-old beauty dancing on the Broadway stage when she meets William Randolph Hearst and finds herself captivated by his riches, passion and desire to make her a movie star. Following a whirlwind courtship, she learns through trial and error to live as Hearst’s mistress when a divorce from his wife proves impossible. A baby girl is born in secret in 1919 and they agree to never acknowledge her publicly as their own. In a burgeoning Hollywood scene, she works hard making movies while living a lavish partying life that includes a secret love affair with Charlie Chaplin. In late 1937, at the height of the depression, Hearst wrestles with his debtors and failing health, when Marion loans him $1M when nobody else will. Together, they must confront the movie that threatens to invalidate all of Marion’s successes in the movie industry: Citizen Kane.

After her mother and father divorce at age seven, Leslie quickly learns the hard lessons of being Dad’s favorite. The abuse begins at age nine and doesn’t end until she begins to fight back at Fourteen.

Leslie’s mother, an alcoholic with mental instabilities, wasn’t capable of parenting the three little girls, going in and out of mental hospitals for all of Leslie’s youth. Her father assumed full custody of the girls and at age twelve, the family moved from their 63-acre rustic ranch in Northern California to a 45-foot sailboat in Southern California. The family spent two-and-a-half years living aboard their boat preparing for the trip of their father’s dream.

Fourteen is the first of two books in a story of courage and hope, and of one girl’s fight against an overbearing, abusive and sometimes irrational father who demanded the best, while sometimes doing less than the best himself. You will be inspired by Leslie’s courage and fight and be amazed at all she encounters and overcomes.