Lydia Pasternak is a decade out of high school, but inside she's still Danny Pasternak’s little sister, the bookish teenager who lived in her popular older brother's shadow until the night he disappeared. Though she has spent her adult life trying to forget that year she turned sixteen, the memory of her brother’s vanishing still haunts her: her secret pleasure at the attention she received as the missing football hero’s sister, her ambivalence about his possible fate, her emergence as an individual in his absence. As her parents went off the rails, she went to her first keg parties and befriended the school's elite crowd—all the while fervidly helping the attractive private investigator her family hired to search for clues to Danny's whereabouts. The shocking end to that trail of clues—an end that Lydia never prepared herself for—left a wound that has never healed, even now as she prepares to return to her hometown after many years.
An authentic dissection of public and private grief, The Local News is a moving, memorable debut that explores the complicated bond between siblings and how our brothers and sisters define who we are.
Praise for The Local News...
“The Local News achieves two nearly impossible things: It’s a funny book about harrowing circumstances, and it’s a poignant book about high school. Gershow’s narrator, Lydia Pasternak, is droll, keen, and utterly engaging. I couldn’t put this novel down.” —Anthony Doerr, author of The Shell Collector and About Grace
“Miriam Gershow has a fresh, funny and very engaging voice and a powerful story to tell, and Lydia Pasternak is a character you’ll miss long after the book is finished. I was charmed from the first page and undone by the last.” —Beth Gutcheon, author of Still Missing and Good-bye and Amen
