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Santa Fe Writer's Project
July 2021
On Sale: June 30, 2021
270 pages
ISBN: 1951631013
EAN: 9781951631017
Kindle: B08S46YS4T
Paperback / e-Book
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Coming of Age
Named Most Anticipated of 2021 by The Rumpus * Betches * Frolic * and The Millions!
"A delightful debut...James is a writer to watch." -- ADAM JOHNSON, National Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Orphan Master's Son
A darkly funny coming-of-age tale set against the backdrop of the Great Recession that takes the audience on a wild journey through a strange, uncertain modern America. For fans of Chloe Caldwell's I'll Tell You in Person and Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation.
Mona Mireles is a quintessential overachiever: a former spelling bee champion and valedictorian of her college class, she has a sterling résumé and a wall of plaques and medals in her bedroom that stretches floor to ceiling.
She's also broke, unemployed, back at home with her parents, and completely adrift in life and love.
Mona is seven months out of college and desperately trying to reassemble the pieces of her life after the Wall Street job she had waiting for her post-graduation dissolves in the wake of the Great Recession. When her reaction to losing her job goes viral and she is publicly branded the "Sad Millennial," Mona begins a downward spiral into self-pity, bitterness, and late-night drunken binges on cat videos. Mona's the sort who says exactly the right thing at absolutely the wrong moments, seeing the world through a cynic's eyes.
Set in suburban Tucson amid the financial and social malaise of the early 2000s, 23-year-old Mona must not only find a job, but quickly learn to navigate the complexities of adult relationships within the black hole of her parents' shattering marriage.
At her mother's urging, Mona grudgingly joins a support group for job seekers, and slowly begins to see that all is not lost, and that perhaps losing the job on Wall Street was a blessing in disguise. She might even learn what it is she finds meaningful in life. The question is:
Will she be brave enough to go after it?
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