Ranging across a uniquely American landscape, from rural Idaho and suburban Arizona to downtown Boston, the eleven stories in Melanie Rae Thon's eagerly awaited reissued collection, Girls in the Grass, explore with painful lyricism the harsh awakenings of adolescence: eroticism and hypocrisy, love and violence, responsibility and guilt, adult inconstancy and the random cruelty of life and death.
"Melanie Rae Thon belts out her short stories in a tone and style reminiscent of classic blues singers.... The reader is swept along not only by Ms. Thon's remarkable characterizations but also by the taut, magic current of her prose, which carries an exhilarating rhythmic punch."
The New York Times Book Review
"The stories are as tough and beautiful as prairie wildflowers. The dazzling prose and penetrating psychological insights mark the emergence of a fine, new American voice in contemporary fiction."
