I was updating my website (early!) this morning and was
just feeling so, so happy about all these kinds words about my forthcoming
novel!! And I’m grateful to the writers who took time out of their busy writing
lives to read the book and offer their support.
“They think she is a simple, well-mannered
girl, quiet and helpful. But the reader has seen into her past, knows her
uncle, her little sister, her father, and all that happened back in Iowa. She
is anything but. A dark, intense novel on a hot subject: female friendship
complicated by class and privilege.”
“Leslie Pietrzyk’s haunting SILVER GIRL begins
in 1980, with a nameless narrator starting her freshman year at a prestigious
Chicago-area university. The narrator escaped her economically depressed Iowa
hometown, but the emotional baggage of a grim childhood and dysfunctional
family continue to weigh her down like the bulky, cheaply made trunk that holds
her belongings… SILVER GIRL concludes with a surge of hope, like the spring
thaw after an icebound Chicago winter.”
~Meg Nola, Foreword Reviews (5 /5 stars)
“In SILVER GIRL, Leslie Pietrzyk fearlessly
explores the complex inner life of a young woman and her myriad complicated
relationships with friends and sisters, while unearthing secrets about her
traumatic past. Pietrzyk treats her characters with incredible empathy and
tenderness, producing a deeply affecting novel about the terrible things we ask
our young women to endure.”
~Mandy Berman, author of PERENNIALS
“Unflinching, thoughtful, and sharp. SILVER
GIRL is the story I’ve been waiting to read: complicated women navigating life
with grit and grace. From small town Iowa to Chicago, rural to urban, haves to
have-nots, SILVER GIRL delivers a poignant truth about how relationships and
regret shape our definitions of home.”
~Melissa Scholes Young, author of FLOOD
“SILVER GIRL is a blunt and piercing character
study of a young woman making choices that are both understandable and
unthinkably wrong; we watch helplessly as our unnamed narrator digs herself in
deeper and deeper, sabotaging nearly every relationship in her life. Pietrzyk
writes insightfully about female friendship, personal morality and
accountability, unspooling an eminently compelling plot and delivering us,
finally, to a redeeming moment of grace.””
~Carolyn Parkhurst, NYT Bestselling author
of The Dogs of Babel, Lost and Found, The Nobodies Album and Harmony
“The first thing that comes to mind when I
think of Leslie and her stories is the courage and ferocity of her women. Women
who must negotiate a culture not of their own design and not of their own
choosing. Women who have experienced tragedy and misfortune. Women who have
made mistakes. Women who are honest in their testimony, resourceful in their
lives, daring, not shy.”
~Robert Olmstead, award-winning author
of Savage Country, Far Bright Star, Coal Black Horse, and The
Coldest Night
