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 newsletterIn lyric, diamondcut prose, Selah Saterstrom revisits the mythic, deadend Southern town of Beau Repose. This time, the story follows a strungout American teenager influenced by heavy metal, inspired by Ginger Rogers, hellbent on selfdestruction, 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. Vituss dance of her adolescence morphs into slowmotion inertia abroad, an illness brings her home againto 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, cuttothequick language (Raleigh News & Observer) that makes her novels impossible to put down. Spare, raw, and transcendent, Saterstroms unflinching examination of modernday 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 Denvers Creative Writing Program. Visit her website at www.selahsaterstrom.com.