It is time for another Sunday Street Team Post. This time I have an excerpt from Girl in Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow. Check it out this synopsis!
Charlotte Davis is in pieces. At seventeen she’s already lost more than most people lose in a lifetime. But she’s learned how to forget. The thick glass of a mason jar cuts deep, and the pain washes away the sorrow until there is nothing but calm. You don’t have to think about your father and the river. Your best friend, who is gone forever. Or your mother, who has nothing left to give you.
Every new scar hardens Charlie’s heart just a little more, yet it still hurts so much. It hurts enough to not care anymore, which is sometimes what has to happen before you can find your way back from the edge.
Excerpt:
Like a baby harp seal, I’m all white. My forearms are thickly bandaged, heavy as clubs. My thighs are wrapped tightly, too; white gauze peeks out from the shorts Nurse Ava pulled from the lost and found box behind the nurses’ station.
Like an orphan, I came here with no clothes. Like an orphan, I was wrapped in a bedsheet and left on the lawn of Regions Hospital in the freezing sleet and snow, blood seeping through the flowered sheet.
The security guard who found me was bathed in menthol cigarettes and the flat stink of machine coffee. There was a curly forest of white hair inside his nostrils.
He said, “Holy Mother of God, girl, what’s been done to you?”
My mother didn’t come to claim me.
But: I remember the stars that night. They were like salt against the sky, like someone spilled the shaker against very dark cloth.
That mattered to me, their accidental beauty. The last thing I thought I might see before I died on the cold, wet grass.
*
The girls here, they try to get me to talk. They want to know What’s your story, morning glory? Tell me your tale, snail. I hear their stories every day in Group, at lunch, in Crafts, at breakfast, at dinner, on and on. These words that spill from them, black memories, they can’t stop. Their stories are eating them alive, turning them inside out. They cannot stop talking.
I cut all my words out. My heart was too full of them.
*
I room with Louisa. Louisa is older and her hair is like a red-and-gold noisy ocean down her back. There’s so much of it, she can’t even keep it in with braids or buns or scrunchies. Her hair smells like strawberries; she smells better than any girl I’ve ever known. I could breathe her in forever.
My first night here, when she lifted her blouse to change for bed, in the moment before that crazy hair fell over her body like a protective cape, I saw them, all of them, and I sucked my breath in hard.
She said, “Don’t be scared, little one.”
I wasn’t scared. I’d just never seen a girl with skin like mine.
Sounds like a really good book to me. What about yall? Keep reading for info on where you can get your hands on a copy.
About the Author:
Kathleen Glasgow lives in Tucson, Arizona. She writes for the radio show The Writer's Almanac and can probably provide you with some interesting anecdotes about historical literary figures if you asked nicely. You can find out more about Kathleen by following her on Twitter: @kathglasgow, Instagram, @misskathleenglasgow (where she posts about sunsets, depression, spirit circles, and books) or her website: kathleenglasgowbooks.com.
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24879132-girl-in-pieces?ac=1&from_search=true
And now you can win a copy HERE!!
Thanks for reading guys. Hope you check this book out! Remember there is help available for anyone for anything. If you need it don't be afraid to reach out!
If you or someone you know is struggling and needs help, please consider contacting:
Crisis Text Line: Text START to 741-741
National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255
To Write Love on Her Arms: https://twloha.com/find-help/local-resources/
National Runaway Hotline: 1-800-621-4000
