Winner of the 2022 Firebird Book Award - Biographical Fiction and Women's Fiction

What does it feel like to chase a dream in a world that wasn't built for you?

Beyond the Song is the autobiographical novel of Carol Marks, alter ego of real-life singer-songwriter Carol Selick, a
young woman coming of age in the turbulent sixties and seventies, determined to make it in the music business no
matter what it costs her.

Each chapter opens with original lyrics Carol wrote and still performs today. Together, they trace the arc of a woman
learning to believe in herself, through rebellion, romance, heartbreak, and hard-won courage.

From the streets of Washington DC to the hills of Berkeley to the music rooms of New York City, Carol's journey is
warm, vulnerable, and irrepressibly alive. She hitchhikes through California at the time of the Manson murders. She
attends anti-war demonstrations that turn violent. She falls in and out of love. And along the way she finds two guides
who change everything: Rose, a pioneering Black woman songwriter inspired by real-life Hall-of-Famer Rose Marie
McCoy, Carol Selick's own mentor, and a fictionalized psychoanalyst who helps her finally stand on her own two feet.
This is a story about what it meant to be a woman with a guitar and a dream in an era that was just beginning to make
room for her.
Carol Selick is a performing singer-songwriter who collaborated with Hall-of-Fame songwriter Rose Marie McCoy,
whose songs were recorded by Nat King Cole, Elvis Presley, and Ike and Tina Turner. She has recorded multiple
albums, performed for decades, and co-founded the New Jersey Garden State Opry. Beyond the Song is her debut
novel, fiction rooted in a life actually lived.