the way ryan dupree tells it, penny sprung from his forehead, fully formed and fully successful.

that is not what actually happened. he was gang pressed into marrying helene peterson years back, and had five boys before penny came along squalling into the world. and for a good deal of his life, he didn’t pay too much attention to penny. she was, in a word, unremarkable. got along with her brothers, did almost everything she was asked to do, and was more of a wallflower than anything else.

that was unfortunately not how her teenage years went. her mother increasingly found that she couldn’t push penny into being a more active person. she couldn’t make penny go out for sports or become a cheerleader or take interest in boys. the real friction came when penny started refusing to go to church with her after a disastrous lake baptism when penny was thirteen.

ryan dupree decided that something had to be done. his mother entered the picture, took one look at the situation, and demanded that penny stay with her for a summer.

in that summer, as far as ryan knew, penny developed into a more outgoing person. that was when she started to bloom, become more and more like him.

that’s where ryan dupree centers his narrative on his daughter.

for penny, however, the feelings of discontent started when she was a child; penny always had her own inner world to contend with, her own feelings and concerns that other people didn’t seem to have. while her father was a writer who interviewed people, who painstakingly tracked down stories, penny made up her own books. she wrote her own stories--and found herself too shy to share with others.

particularly because her stories weren’t like the ones in books she could find. in her books, she could explore her own feelings of love for others. other girls, in fact, being the mainstay. as she grew older, those feelings expanded: boys, girls, and even people who didn’t seem to be either.

her mother found one of the books penny usually hid one day. not only was she angry by the displays of magical fancy, but the fact that it wasn’t just heterosexuality being displayed in those books made her angry. even more infuriating, she found out that penny had even submitted some of her stories to publications, and had won money for them, substantial amounts that her mother had no access to. that was what dragged penny into a baptism and almost broke her spirit entirely. after all; how could her mother know that children at school seemed to have picked up on penny’s “oddness” despite her efforts to hide it.

when she showed up to her grandmother adelaide’s house, deep in louisiana over a hot summer, she expected more punishments, more river baptisms, maybe even an exorcism.

what penny got instead was the woman’s grace, and her love. where her parents didn't understand stand her or didn't make the effort to understand her in the slightest, adelaide dupree was warm, inviting, and most of all, gave penny the attentino she needed. she didn't push to read what penny wrote; just let penny discover the large house she had, full of odds and ends, from both her life asa married woman and of a woman happy to have affairs with anyone she wanted to. some of it was deeply scandalous, and much of it life affirming for penny.

penny never straight forwardly came out to her grandmother. instead there were talks between them, penny reaching out to her grandmother to find a kinship she never knew she could have.

going back home was painful. penny felt drained to go back with her mother, and retreated back into herself as soon as possible. only the summers were times where she could truly be free. in an act of defiance, and need, she applied to tulane university at seventeen--and upon acceptance, all but ran to her grandmother. she stayed with her as she made her way through the offered programs, slowly trying to discover her own sexuality, with varying results that ultimately drove penny in and out of the closet.

what changed was when an injury drove her father to come back ohme and take stock of his children, and his marriage. he and penny reluctantly reconnected. he came down to see her, and casually mentioned that he had found some of penny's old stories in an old hiding place. penny expected him to criticize her; instead, he asked her if she were interested in becoming a published author, something adelaide had been quietly pushing at penny for. nervously, penny said no. after some deal of thought, and a wrestling with her nerves, however, she changed her mind, and offered her father one of her manuscripts, that was tamer and more conforming than the rest.

her first novels were published as she finished up her last year in college, as she took classes every summer, at the maximum hours she could take. as free as she felt in her grandmother's house, penny found herself folding back into her own little world. dating was very little for her, and there were other worries. her grandmother seemed to get sicker more often, and despite tests, nothing was initially found. penny graduated in the top of her class, and dedicated the next few years to teaching and writing.

she wished the writing went smoothly; unfortunately, her editors insisted on a particular view of her works. penny, feeling young, pressured, and a little unsteady, allowed her books to be white washed into a more heterosexual version of her vision. she pushed and tugged, but tried to content herself with what she had. and then adelaide started to change. her health started to fail, and worried, penny took her to the doctor herself after adelaide kept refusing. after repeated visits, late onset Multiple Sclerosis was revealed to be the culprit. no one was able to care for her grandmother, and penny took it upon herself to put her fledgling career on hold to care for her.

it was a long hard fight to keep adelaide alive. she didn't have much faith in modern medicine, and penny spent a heartbreaking amount of time trying to convince her to take more modern treatments. she struggled and struggled, but in 2004, adelaide passed. her money, which was rather significant despite her general lifestyle, was significatn but no balm to penny who believed that she could have lived longer if she had pushed harder. penny sank into a malaise, attempting to both exvcavate her grandmother's house and put herself back together to write in a way she enjoyed again. in the meantime, she sold the rights of her books for adaptions, and slowly tried to get her head above water again.

that turned into a strange monkey paw situation. while she slowly got back into writing again, one of her most popular novels was adapted to a show; but as the show wore on the publishers pushed for her to make her books more like the television show. penny outright refused to, hating that she had even ceded some creative control in her youger years. and so the publishers took her books from her, and hired a ghostwriter to complete it. the experience embittered her deeply, penny stubbornly finding any avenue possible to continue with her specific vision for her novels.

in 2013, penny moved to san francisco, having finally finished selling her grandmother's estate. she started to teach at Saint Mary's College of California in it's creative writing program. having everything together, she had more or less a more simple existence--until diana prince showed up in her life in november of 2018.