Lether’s tale is both an American whore story and a horror story. Through the protagonist’s struggle, Sent West explores the impossibility of being the perfect American woman and the insanity induced by the pressure of expectation for young women to fulfill this role. Running from religious oppression and patriarchal abuse, Shelli arrives in Hollywood only to find that the demons she so desperately tried to escape have taken a new form. What began as a glamorous search for autonomy quickly becomes a ghost story, riddled with shrieking banshees resembling her mother and the looming phantoms of her family’s past materializing on B-movie film sets, on dates in smoky Hollywood bars, and finally in her “fairytale” marriage. 

Where does a young woman find themselves when torn between the violence of Hollywood and the Church? Where does she find herself when pulled between the beauty of the Madonna birthing Christ and that of the superstar birthing a hit radio single?  A collision of ideals – an identity built on the dissonance of these completely opposing influences takes shape, just before motherhood rears its unruly head as the ultimate condemnation to the dreams of profession and success.