On a lush mountaintop trapped in time, two women vow to protect each other at all costs-and one young girl must defy her father to survive.An hour from the closest West Virginia mining town, fifteen-year-old Wren Bird lives in a cloistered mountain cabin with her parents. They have no car, no mailbox, and no visitors-except for her mother's lifelong best friend. Every Sunday, Wren's father delivers winding sermons in an abandoned gas station, where he takes up serpents and praises the Lord for his blighted white eye, proof of his divinity and key to the hold he has over the community, over Wren and her mother. But over the course of one summer, a miracle performed by Wren's father quickly turns to tragedy. As the order of her world begins to shatter, Wren must uncover the truth of her father's mysterious legend and her mother's harrowing history and complex bond with her best friend. And with that newfound knowledge, Wren can imagine a different future for...

A riveting literary debut about the cost of keeping quiet Amy Jo Burns grew up in Mercury, Pennsylvania, a conservative Rust Belt town fallen sleepy after the steel industry's collapse. But the year Amy turned ten, her town woke up. That year, Howard Lotte, her beloved piano teacher, was accused of assaulting his female students. Among the countless girls questioned, only seven came out against Lotte, admitting his wandering hands. They were ostracized. As for the remaining girls--well, they were smarter. They lied. They said, He didn't. Amy Jo Burns was one of the girls who lied. But such a lie has its own consequences. In Cinderland, against a backdrop of fire and steel, shame and redemption, Burns tells of the boys she ran from and toward, the friends she abandoned, and the endless performances she gave to please a town that never trusted girls in the first place. Cinderland is the story of growing up in a town that both...