"Like an experimentally inclined Annie Proulx, Saterstrom tersely
renders the effects of social violence on individual lives . . . the
effect is shattering and transcendent."--Modern Times Bookstore
newsletter
In lyric, diamond-cut prose, Selah Saterstrom revisits the mythic,
dead-end Southern town of Beau Repose. This time, the story follows a
strung-out American teenager influenced by heavy metal, inspired by
Ginger Rogers, hell-bent on self-destruction, and more intelligent than
anyone around her realizes. She is forced into rehab and private school,
and her life, at least on the surface, changes course, eventually
leading to theology studies in Scotland. But as the feverish St. Vitus's
dance of her adolescence morphs into slow-motion inertia abroad, an
illness brings her home again--to face the legacy of pain she left
behind and to find a way to become the lead in a dance of her own
creation.
An heir to William Faulkner and Toni Morrison, Saterstrom soars above
the traditional boundaries of the American novel with "exquisite,
cut-to-the-quick language" (Raleigh News & Observer) that makes her
novels "impossible to put down." Spare, raw, and transcendent,
Saterstrom's unflinching examination of modern-day Dixie and
contemporary adolescence lights up the dark corners of the American
experience.
Selah Saterstrom is the author of The Pink Institution, a debut
novel praised across the country for "letting gusts of fresh, tart air
blow into the old halls of Southern Gothic" (The Believer). A
Mississippi native, she is currently on the faculty of the University of
Denver's Creative Writing Program. Visit her website at
www.selahsaterstrom.com.
