Illustrated with her drawings, Happy Girl is a true story and the author’s first full-length novel. The cover design comes from a detail of one of her many paintings. Happy Girl is a very personal account of time spent in her native Latvia and has stirred up much controversy in the Latvian North-American reading public due to its frankness and accounts of her personal experiences. At times “dark” the book is also filled with humour and love of nature and of the author’s native land.