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From the acclaimed author of The Boys of My Youth and Festival Days, a “mesmerizing… beautifully written” debut novel that evokes the wrenching, exquisite moment just before we step into adulthood (Ann Patchett).

The fourteen-year-old narrator of In Zanesville is a late bloomer. She flies under the radar — a sidekick, a marching-band dropout, a disastrous babysitter. Luckily, she has a best friend with whom she shares the everyday adventures of a 1970s American girlhood, incidents through which a world is revealed and character is forged.

In time, the two girls’ friendship is tested — by their families’ claims on them, by a clique of popular girls who stumble upon them, and by their first startling, subversive intimations of womanhood.

With dry wit and piercing observation, Jo Ann Beard shows us that in the seemingly quiet streets of America’s innumerable Zanesvilles is a universe of wonders, and that within the souls of the awkward and the overlooked often burns something radiant.

“Probably my favorite novel of the year…A marvelous reading experience…I don’t think I’ll ever forget the unnamed, perfectly realized narrator of In Zanesville.” —Nancy Pearl, NPR

Genre:

"Masterfully wrought...downright hilarious and often hold-your-breath-and-hope-for-the-best suspenseful. The restraint with which Beard deploys moments of tension and humor make each page glimmer."
Samuel Reaves Slaton, O Magazine
PRAISE FOR IN ZANESVILLE:

"A fierce, funny, brave, and bracingly honest new novel....Every bit as poignant and powerful as The Catcher in the Rye."
Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune
"An exuberant first novel....Beard has a knack for melding the funny and the sad, amplifying small moments into something big."
Sussannah Meadows, New York Times
"A fierce, funny, brave, and bracingly honest new novel....Every bit as poignant and powerful as The Catcher in the Rye."
Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune
"Masterfully wrought...this novel is at times downright hilarious and often hold-your-breath-and-hope-for-the-best suspenseful. The restraint with which Beard deploys moments of tension and humor makes each page glimmer."
Samuel Reaves Slaton, O Magazine
"An exuberant first novel....Beard has a knack for melding the funny and the sad, amplifying small moments into something big."
Susannah Meadows, New York Times
"Epic and profound. These thoughtful, funny, awestruck, slightly peculiar girls are so endearing, so painfully true."
Karen Valby, Entertainment Weekly
"A sure-handed first novel ....It's impossible not to be charmed."
Yvonne Zipp, Washington Post
"A fresh comic voice and a talent for sharp familiarizing place-details."
Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
"A smashing coming-of-age story.... Beard is a faultless chronicler of the young and hopeful; readers couldn't ask for a better guide for a trip through the wilds of adolescence."
Publishers Weekly
"Moving.... Beard travels the well-worn road of budding young womanhood with surprising freshness."
Courtney Jones, Booklist
"Beard has beautifully captured how a shy but observant girl might interpret the awkwardness and the struggle for acceptance in the high school's perplexing social milieu.... Resonates as a bittersweet remembrance."
Kirkus
"Jo Ann Beard has written a mesmerizing account of a time in a girl's life when every moment, every action, is laden with enormous importance. It is so beautifully written, so perfect in its pitch, that I couldn't put it down."
Ann Patchett, author of Run
"Full of charm and wisdom and laugh-out-loud humor, In Zanesville will have readers recalling their own years of wonder and want and fear and doubt. I loved literally every character, every scene."
Elizabeth Berg, author of Once Upon a Time, There Was You
"Beard is a writer of immense talents. In Zanesville is far more than a coming-of-age novel. Our offbeat narrator is spellbinding in her bold vivacity and honesty, an unforgettable character quickly embraced and beloved at the center of our lives."
Howard Norman, author of What Is Left the Daughter
"Beard has a sharp eye, a wry wit, and a warm heart, and in her new book, she has captured perfectly not only a particular era in American life, but an evanescent moment in one beautifully evoked life. I loved this book."
James Hynes, author of Next
"In Zanesville is told by a narrator attuned to the humor and tragedy around her, battling it with her own desperate logics. This novel is an amazing demonstration of friendship, the most necessary and slippery thing we can possess."
Peter Rock, author of My Abandonment
"A fresh comic voice and a talent for sharp familiarizing place-details."

Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

On Sale: Apr 3, 2012
Page Count: 320 pages
Publisher: Back Bay Books
ISBN-13: 9780316125277

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Jo Ann Beard

About the Author

Jo Ann Beard is the author of the groundbreaking collection of autobiographical essays, The Boys of My Youth, and the novel, In Zanesville. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, Best American Essays, and other magazines and anthologies. She has received a Whiting Foundation Award and nonfiction fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2022, she received an American Academy of Arts and Letters 2022 Award in Literature. She teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College.

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Jo Ann Beard

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