Girl in Pieces

Seventeen-year-old Charlotte "Charlie" Davis has already lost more than most people lose in a lifetime: her father, her home, her best friend, and any real sense of safety. She has learned to turn her pain inward, cutting herself to make the unbearable bearable, and when the novel opens she is a patient in a Minnesota treatment facility, mute and barely holding on.

When funding runs out and she is discharged before she's ready, Charlie sets out on her own for Tucson, Arizona, chasing the fragile hope of a fresh start. But independence at seventeen is precarious, and the people she leans on — including a charismatic, self-destructive older musician — carry their own damage. As Charlie fights to stay standing, she must decide whether survival is enough, or whether she can actually build a life worth wanting.

Unflinching and deeply compassionate, Girl in Pieces is a raw portrait of self-harm, addiction, and homelessness, and a hard-won story about the slow, imperfect work of healing.