Jefferson James raised his daughter Jillian when her mother took off after her birth. Throughout Jillian's life, she learned nothing about her mom, and her dad was close-mouthed about his past.
The Burning Girl by Claire Messud relates the story of a close childhood friendship between Julia and Cassie that collapses by middle school as the girls grow apart and Cassie becomes trou
When Pete Townsend coined the phrase “teenage wasteland” to describe suburban adolescent life he was probably not referring to such wastelands in an actual geographic desert, but that is what the s
Back in March 2010, when Teddy Wayne took the podium at McNally Jackson bookstore to read from his debut novel Kapitoil, someone in the crowd leaned over and whispered, “He’s so smart—he w
Being a first-generation American college student is hard enough, but when you throw an international immigration battle right in the middle of your neighborhood, life can get absolutely chaotic.
Gunnar Bishop assumes guardianship of his five-year-old niece RubyLyn after her parents die. Now, in 1969, RubyLyn ("Roo") is 15 and works in her uncle's tobacco field in Nameless, Kentucky.
