Silver Girl

A young woman, desperate to escape the unspoken secrets of her impoverished Midwestern family, bluffs her way into college, arriving at the prestigious "school by the lake" in Chicago where she meets Jess, charismatic and rich and needy, and the two quickly form an insular, competitive friendship.

The narrator immerses herself in Jess's world, collecting her new friend's hand-me-downs, accompanying her to family dinners and frat parties. As guilt builds for the sister she has left behind, the narrator is drawn into Jess's apparently effortless existence, with a perfect Yuppie family living nearby, and a doting fiancee.

Meanwhile the Tylenol Killer -- a local psychopath rumored to be stuffing cyanide into pills sold at the drugstore -- is at first just terrifying gossip on campus. But the death of one of his victims triggers a surprising chain of events with major repercussions for the lives of both young women. Suddenly the lifestyle the narrator has come to share with Jess vanishes. As her attempts to restore order and control become increasingly desperate, their fragile friendship is exposed; and both young women must confront the realities of an adulthood neither one expected.

Silver Girl is an intimate coming-of-age account of the nuances of female friendship, of obsession and longing, greed and desire. Leslie Pietrzyk delves into the ways class and money dictate one's sense of self, and how relationships ultimately define who we become.

• This Angel on My Chest (Pitt Drue Heinz Lit Prize)
• The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats
• Circe's Bicycle
• Blind Spot
• Anagnorisis: Poems
• Fort Necessity (Phoenix Poets)
• How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays
• The Mars Room: A Novel
• 4 3 2 1: A Novel
• A Year and a Day: A Novel