The Torn Skirt

Sara, the teenaged femme fatale of The Torn Skirt, Rebecca Godfrey's stunning first novel, says she was born with a fever. "Highschool, I was a good girl. I was pretty, I smiled, I fit in fine. And then as I turned sixteen and stopped smiling, the fever returned, though my skin stayed pale and sure, showing no sign of the heat inside me." Awaiting arrest in her cluttered bedroom, Sara offers her own densely lyrical and tragically crooked version of the events that led her to a rain-smeared alley in downtown Victoria and a gruesome crime. A taut mystery embedded in a shocking coming-of-age story, The Torn Skirt combines the chilling naturalism of Mary Gaitskill with the stifling poetic intensity of Elizabeth Smart.