Thumbelina: A Novel - Softcover

Michael Upchurch The Seattle Times Suspenseful and utterly credible...powerfully affecting...Koenig has mastered her material and plumbed the deepest recesses of her young heroine.

Philip Graham author of Interior Design and How to Read an Unwritten Language A rare literary pleasure...delightfully off-center and strangely wise...a deeply moving debut, a first novel that deserves a wide and admiring audience.

David Shields author of Remote and Dead Languages Beautifully colloquial yet poetic...has unflagging verbal energy and extraordinary emotional power.

Mark Rozzo Los Angeles Times [An] affecting meditation on youth and doom.

Angelica Skyler certainly wasn't a perfect mother to fourteen-year-old Thumbelina, but when she is found dead in the local duck pond, Thumbelina yearns to have her back. Six feet tall with thick glasses covering a face she doesn't even know is pretty, Thumbelina is now alone with a few Johnny Cash tapes, a guitar that belonged to the musician father she never knew, and a spirit almost as large as the odds against her.
Quickly placed with a foster family, Thumbelina bumps straight into Myrna, a feisty redhead half her size and with a baby in her stomach. Also fourteen years old and as savvy as they come, Myrna has no trouble discerning that her secretive new roommate is pregnant, too. With little money but lots of charm, the unlikely pair strike out on their own, only to run into more serious trouble and heartache than they could have ever imagined.
Laughs mingle with tears throughout this bittersweet, unforgettable story of a young girl embracing hope in the face of tragedy. Immensely talented first-time novelist Andrea Koenig has created a character whose distinctive and instantly lovable voice will hook readers from the very first page -- and won't let go until the last.