Beautiful Girls

Beautiful Girls

In “True,” an exquisitely shy teenage girl tries to fathom the hidden secrets of beauty from a boy who’s “the prettiest person in the entire school.” A lonely divorcée in “Safeway,” wanders the darkened aisles of a grocery store during a power outage, and becomes “certain a touch of rot had taken root in her heart… and that she still might live better.” In “Wash, Rinse, Spin”, a hapless young woman loses her laundry and must resort to the decrepit wardrobe she wore while working in B movies, as her dying father fades in her hometown. And in the title story, voracious girls who long for love and admiration compete in a town pageant.

From the fierce bonds among sisters, to the discoveries of a girl who roams her neighborhood in the wee hours of the morning, to the allure of a tropical paradise where anything feels possible, Beautiful Girls explores what it means to be a woman in the modern world, looking for a place to call home.

At once magical, tender, and wise, this book establishes Beth Ann Bauman as a bold new literary voice.