The Baddest Girl on the Planet
By Heather Frese
Lee Smith Novel Prize Winner 2020
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Evie Austin, native of Hatteras Island, NC, and baddest girl on the planet, has not lived her life in a straight line. There have been several detours—career snafus, bad romantic choices, a loved but unplanned child—not to mention her ill-advised lifelong obsession with boxer Mike Tyson. This is the story of what the baddest girl on the planet must find in herself when a bag of pastries, a new lover, or quick trip to Vegas won’t fix anything, and when something more than casual haplessness is required. The Baddest Girl on the Planet is inventive, sharp, witty, and poignant. Readers will want to jump in and advise this baddest girl on the planet—or at least just give her a shake or a hug—at every fascinating turn.
“This sun-and-salt-kissed coming-of-age story reads like a wry, honest chat with a close friend." —Jaclyn Fulwood, Shelf Awareness
“Heather Frese has written a coming-of-age story like no other— with a fiercely original narrative voice that’s funny, brave, honest, and occasionally terrifying . . . in fact, compulsively readable!” —Lee Smith, Blue Marlin and The Last Girls
“The Baddest Girl on the Planet is set on an island known as the ‘Graveyard of the Atlantic’ for all the shipwrecks it’s caused, which feels just right: the novel is about, among other things, the islands— both literal and metaphorical —where we feel stranded; the wrecks we cause or find ourselves marooned by. In The Baddest Girl on the Planet, Heather Frese explores some of the most tender spots of what it is to be human: how to come to terms with our choices, how to grow and change in a place that seems to want us to stay the same, and what it means to call a place (or another person) home.” —Maggie Smith, Keep Moving and Good Bones
Hardcover: ISBN: 9781949467161 - $25.95
Paperback: ISBN: 9781949467840 - $17.95
Heather Frese’s fiction, essays, and poetry have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, the Los Angeles Review, Front Porch, the Barely South Review, Switchback, and elsewhere, earning notable mention in the Pushcart Prize Anthology and Best American Essays. She received her master’s degree from Ohio University and her M.F.A. from West Virginia University. Coastal North Carolina is her longtime love and source of inspiration, her writing deeply influenced by the wild magic and history of the Outer Banks. She currently writes, edits, and wrangles three small children in Raleigh, North Carolina.
