The Center of Everything
A dazzling debut in the tradition of Jane Hamilton and Mona Simpson. In Laura Moriarty's extraordinary first novel, a young girl tries to make sense of an unruly world spinning around her. Growing up with a single mother who is chronically out of work and dating a married man, 10-year old Evelyn Bucknow learns early how to fend for herself. Offering an affecting portrayal of a troubled mother/daughter relationship, one in which the daughter is very often expected to play the role of the adult, the novel also gives readers a searing rendering of the claustrophobia of small town midwestern life, as seen through the eyes of a teenage girl. Evelyn must come to terms with the heartbreaking lesson of first love -- that not all loves are meant to be and determine who she is and who she wants to be. Stuck in the middle of Kansas, between best friends, and in the midst of her mother's love, Evelyn finds herself . . .in The Center of Everything. Since earning her M.A. from the University of Kansas, Laura Moriarty won the George Bennet Fellowship for Creative Writing at Phillips Exeter Academy. This is her first novel. She's at work on her next novel and lives in Portland, Maine. EXCERPT: I look out my window, down at the yellow rectangles whizzing under us in the middle of the highway. There is nothing but fields of wheat on each side of the road, their feathery tops swirling in the heat. Last year, Ms. Fairchild read some of "My Antonia" to us. She said she wanted us to see Kansas and Nebraska the way it is in the book, beautiful, a breadbasket that feeds many people. She said Kansas is beautiful if you look at it the right way, and that weshouldn't believe anything other people try to say about it. "The abundance of it," she said, spreading her arms in her Wednesday dress, as if she were holding something large. I like living in Kansas, not just because of the wheat, but because it's right in the center. If you
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