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2022 PEN/Faulkner Award (nominee)
2022 PEN/Hemingway Award (nominee)
Introducing an extraordinary and original writer whose first novel explores the intersections of grief and rage, personal strength and healing--and what we owe one another.
Fern seeks refuge from her mother’s pill-popping and boyfriends via Soul Train; Gwin finds salvation in the music of Prince much to her congregation’s dismay and Jesenia, miles ahead of her classmates at her gifted and talented high school, is a brainy and precocious enigma. None of this matters to Boss Man, the monster who abducts them and holds them captive in a dilapidated house in Queens.
On the night they are finally rescued, throngs line the block gawking and claiming ignorance. Among them is lifetime resident Miss Metropolitan, advice columnist for the local weekly, but how could anyone who fancies herself a “newspaperwoman” have missed a horror story unfolding right across the street? And why is it that only two of the three girls—now women—were found? The mystery haunts the two remaining “victim girls” who are subjected to the further trauma of becoming symbols as they continuously adapt to their present and their unrelenting past.
Like Colson Whitehead's The Nickel Boys, Ferrell’s Dear Miss Metropolitan gives voice to characters surviving unimaginable tragedy. The story is inventively revealed before, during, and after the ordeal in this singular and urgent novel.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Fern seeks refuge from her mother’s pill-popping and boyfriends via Soul Train; Gwin finds salvation in the music of Prince much to her congregation’s dismay and Jesenia, miles ahead of her classmates at her gifted and talented high school, is a brainy and precocious enigma. None of this matters to Boss Man, the monster who abducts them and holds them captive in a dilapidated house in Queens.
On the night they are finally rescued, throngs line the block gawking and claiming ignorance. Among them is lifetime resident Miss Metropolitan, advice columnist for the local weekly, but how could anyone who fancies herself a “newspaperwoman” have missed a horror story unfolding right across the street? And why is it that only two of the three girls—now women—were found? The mystery haunts the two remaining “victim girls” who are subjected to the further trauma of becoming symbols as they continuously adapt to their present and their unrelenting past.
Like Colson Whitehead's The Nickel Boys, Ferrell’s Dear Miss Metropolitan gives voice to characters surviving unimaginable tragedy. The story is inventively revealed before, during, and after the ordeal in this singular and urgent novel.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"The 'victim girls' in Carolyn Ferrell's novel Dear Miss Metropolitan are some of the most original, rich, memorable characters I've read. Dear Miss Metropolitan is an astonishing, innovative novel of trauma and connection and survival, and Carolyn Ferrell is a brilliant writer." - Karen E Bender
"Sometimes, to write about a horrifying trauma and its resounding effects, you have to write toward the heart of the matter in unexpected ways. Carolyn Ferrell does just that in her remarkable, challenging debut novel Dear Miss Metropolitan. This is the story of three girls stolen from their lives by a sadistic man, but it is also about a community that failed each of the girls and what it can be like to emerge from a very dark, damaged place on fragile footing. Dear Miss Metropolitan is a story told in brilliant, jagged fragments. It is a story that will make you uncomfortable and it will make you ache and make you rage. Ferrell's novel is a monumental provocation and heralds great things to come from an immensely talented writer." - Roxane Gay
"Dear Miss Metropolitan is heart-wreck of a story of how pain and suffering fracture lives, but also a hopeful one that testifies of the human will to survive. While the nexus of the book is unimaginable trauma and its aftermath, Carolyn Ferrell has wrung from it, wondrous beauty. Believeyoume, it’s the kind of book that begs at least two reads: one for the drama propelling you page to page, and another for its inimitable style-the music of its language, the masterful handling of narration, the daring inventiveness. This novel is nothing short of an artistic feat." - Mitchell S Jackson
"You think you’re ready for this novel, but you’re not ready. Carolyn Ferrell has shaped a story made of diamonds and broken glass; it’s going to cut you deep. Dear Miss Metropolitan is a triumph of storytelling in all its forms, a collage of styles and sympathies. A stunner." - Victor LaValle
"Dear Miss Metropolitan showcases Carolyn Ferrell’s dazzlingly original vision, her ability to blend current events and razor-sharp social observation with age-old archetypes, to create dark contemporary mythic narrative-and above all to express, sometimes in single voices, sometimes in chorus, the deepest truths of women’s souls. By turns heartbreaking, comical, chilling, and hauntingly beautiful, Dear Miss Metropolitan leads the reader on an unforgettable epic journey through the shadowy recesses of human transgression, a trip that at surprising moments breaks through into the light." - Andrea Lee
"A brilliant novel, and a stunning feat of sympathetic imagination. It's an amazing accomplishment, to write a book that is so terribly, indelibly sad and also so funny." - Brian Morton
"A daring and powerful first novel. Carolyn Ferrell is masterful in delivering us into the depth of her characters’ dark worlds so that we emerge with the light of understanding and the inspiration to take actions. I am changed after reading this book." - Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
"I think this is really a brilliant book. No one is better than Carolyn Ferrell at capturing the vitality of human voices, and here they blaze out a portrait of the unthinkable, three young women kidnapped for more than a decade. It’s a page-turner genius of a book, astute about the details that sustain, the traps that spring, and what it means to be a girl." - Joan Silber
"Such a beautifully rendered and provocative novel. Ferrell has given me a world I could never have imagined filled with so many people I feel like I’ve always known. A stunner." - Jacqueline Woodson
"Sometimes, to write about a horrifying trauma and its resounding effects, you have to write toward the heart of the matter in unexpected ways. Carolyn Ferrell does just that in her remarkable, challenging debut novel Dear Miss Metropolitan. This is the story of three girls stolen from their lives by a sadistic man, but it is also about a community that failed each of the girls and what it can be like to emerge from a very dark, damaged place on fragile footing. Dear Miss Metropolitan is a story told in brilliant, jagged fragments. It is a story that will make you uncomfortable and it will make you ache and make you rage. Ferrell's novel is a monumental provocation and heralds great things to come from an immensely talented writer." - Roxane Gay
"Dear Miss Metropolitan is heart-wreck of a story of how pain and suffering fracture lives, but also a hopeful one that testifies of the human will to survive. While the nexus of the book is unimaginable trauma and its aftermath, Carolyn Ferrell has wrung from it, wondrous beauty. Believeyoume, it’s the kind of book that begs at least two reads: one for the drama propelling you page to page, and another for its inimitable style-the music of its language, the masterful handling of narration, the daring inventiveness. This novel is nothing short of an artistic feat." - Mitchell S Jackson
"You think you’re ready for this novel, but you’re not ready. Carolyn Ferrell has shaped a story made of diamonds and broken glass; it’s going to cut you deep. Dear Miss Metropolitan is a triumph of storytelling in all its forms, a collage of styles and sympathies. A stunner." - Victor LaValle
"Dear Miss Metropolitan showcases Carolyn Ferrell’s dazzlingly original vision, her ability to blend current events and razor-sharp social observation with age-old archetypes, to create dark contemporary mythic narrative-and above all to express, sometimes in single voices, sometimes in chorus, the deepest truths of women’s souls. By turns heartbreaking, comical, chilling, and hauntingly beautiful, Dear Miss Metropolitan leads the reader on an unforgettable epic journey through the shadowy recesses of human transgression, a trip that at surprising moments breaks through into the light." - Andrea Lee
"A brilliant novel, and a stunning feat of sympathetic imagination. It's an amazing accomplishment, to write a book that is so terribly, indelibly sad and also so funny." - Brian Morton
"A daring and powerful first novel. Carolyn Ferrell is masterful in delivering us into the depth of her characters’ dark worlds so that we emerge with the light of understanding and the inspiration to take actions. I am changed after reading this book." - Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
"I think this is really a brilliant book. No one is better than Carolyn Ferrell at capturing the vitality of human voices, and here they blaze out a portrait of the unthinkable, three young women kidnapped for more than a decade. It’s a page-turner genius of a book, astute about the details that sustain, the traps that spring, and what it means to be a girl." - Joan Silber
"Such a beautifully rendered and provocative novel. Ferrell has given me a world I could never have imagined filled with so many people I feel like I’ve always known. A stunner." - Jacqueline Woodson
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