Short Synopsis
In this heart-stopping, original debut, Tupelo Hassman tells the story of young Rory Hendrix, who is determined to get out of the Reno trailer park where she lives with her bartender mother and prove she's not the feeble-minded imbecile she's been labeled.

Full Synopsis
Rory Hendrix is the least likely of Girl Scouts. She hasn't got a troop or even a badge to call her own. But she's checked the Handbook out from the elementary school library so many times that her name fills all the lines on the card, and she pores over its surreal advice (Uniforms, disposing of outgrown; The Right Use of Your Body; Finding Your Way When Lost) for tips to get off the Calle: that is, the Calle de las Flores, the Reno trailer park where she lives with her mother, Jo, the sweet-faced, hard-luck bartender at the Truck Stop.

Rory's been told that she is one of the "third-generation bastards surely on the road to whoredom." But she's determined to prove the county and her own family wrong. Brash, sassy, vulnerable, wise, and terrified, she struggles with her mother's habit of trusting the wrong men, and the mixed blessing of being too smart for her own good. From diary entries, social workers' reports, half-recalled memories, arrest records, family lore, Supreme Court opinions, and her grandmother's letters, Rory crafts a devastating collage that shows us her world even as she searches for the way out of it.

Tupelo Hassman's Girlchild is a heart-stopping and original debut.

"Hassman has written an incredibly affecting book, made even more poignant by her narration." ---AudioFile

"This debut possesses powerful writing and unflinching clarity." ---Publishers Weekly Starred Review

"With a compelling (if harrowing) story and a wise-child narrator, Hassman's debut gives voice---and soul---to a world so often reduced to cliché. A darkly funny and frequently heartbreaking portrait of life as one of America's have-nots." ---Kirkus

"Hassman's creatively titled, short, free-form chapters are helium-filled imagination fodder, and Hassman takes what could be trite or unbelievable in less talented hands and makes it entirely the opposite." ---Booklist

"Hassman narrates her debut novel, speaking in a fluid cadence and slightly melancholy inflection for Rory. . . . The free-form chapters of this inventive novel make a good transition to audio." ---Booklist Audio Review

Publishers Weekly Review