Knopf Books for Young Readers

Theresa is a smart, cynical girl, just turning 18 and graduating high school.  She is in the throes of a tumultuous romance with a changeable boy named Randy.  Meanwhile James, the young man who lives next door, is madly in love with her and everybody knows it.  When Randy decides to take another girl to her best friend’s graduation party, Theresa invites James as a way of making Randy jealous.  They reunite halfway through the party and James, who had truly deluded himself into thinking he and Theresa would be a couple, drives his motorcycle off a cliff.

The next few months of Theresa’s life are lived in a kind of self-imposed, tortured exile.  She shaves her head, loses thirty pounds, changes her name and “leaves herself,” running off to San Simeon, CA to live a destructive life of cigarettes and alcohol.  But when an 11-year-old girl in her trailer park faces similar guilt, Theresa can no longer hide from her past.  Together they go off seeking a new home for the girl, absolution from James’s mother, and a chance for both of them to find some kind of peace.

Written both in first person and journal entries, The Day I Killed James will be released on May 13, 2008. It is geared toward mature young adults but is definitely suitable for grownups.  More information will be posted on this site as it becomes available.