Pieces of a Girl

Gr 9 Up–Novelist Kuehnert is ready to “tell real stories...about my life.” The book’s cover displays all the labels she’s tried on: “weirdo, sad, numb, damaged,” but also “artist, smart, strong.” Moving upward are “grrrl, resilient,” and—as yet unfinished—“survivor.” Kuehnert “always wanted to tell stories.” Third-grade Stephanie began mentally narrating her life, although doubted she was doing anything “interesting, book-worthy.” Eighth-grade Stephanie wrote poetry—and discovered safety pins and razor blades. Her “angry, bloody girlhood” skirted too close to a fatal adolescence (lasting until “more like twenty-four than eighteen”) of self-harm, addictions, toxic relationships. No one else but Kuehnert—pronounced Key-nert, as only she can so definitively assert—could have narrated the brutally raw, soul-decimating experiences with the transformative triumphs that buttress her to be “one of the girls who lived.”