Pietrzyk’s third novel is the haunting coming-of-age story of a woman who leaves her small, working-class Iowa town for the bright promise of a Chicago university. But rather than reveling in the academic and social opportunities, she grows reclusive. Fittingly unnamed, she possesses a capacity for empathy so strong that she reflects back to other people their desired versions of themselves, and she herself disappears in the process. As it happens, she has a lot to hide, but despite her efforts to discourage intimacy, at last one friendship forces her to face herself. Pietrzyk, author most recently of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize-winning story collection This Angel on My Chest, has written a suspenseful and mesmerizing character study that dramatizes questions of identity and class.
