It's 1985 in a small factory town near Pittsburgh. Eight-year-old Karen's parents are lifelong workers at the Anchor Glass plant, where one Saturday, an employee goes on a shooting spree, killing four supervisors, then himself. This event splits the young girl's life open, and like her mother, she begins to seek comfort in obsessive rituals and superstitions. This beautifully evocative memoir chronicles the next fourteen years, as Karen moves through girlhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. It illuminates small-town factory life; explores a complicated mother-daughter bond; thoughtfully unfolds a smart but insecure girl's coming of age; achingly recounts her attempts to use sex to fit in; and ultimately uncovers the buried secret from her childhood—a medical file with an unbearable report. The Girl Factory deftly travels the intersections of memory and origin. Karen's body remembers details her mind has tried to control. As the young woman mines her interior landscape for answers, certain questions persist. Where does memory live—in the body or the mind? And can you rewrite the story of your past?
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“Indeed, Dietrich works beautifully by understatement, allowing her subtle clues to paint a terrifying world for the innocent protagonist.”
— Publishers Weekly
This book is stunning---a glinting, piercing wonder.
— Paula McLain, author of The Paris WifeBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Karen Dietrich is a writer of fiction, poetry, and memoir. She earned an MFA in poetry from New England College. She also writes music and plays drums in Essential Machine, a band she formed with her husband. Karen was born and raised in southwestern Pennsylvania and currently lives outside Pittsburgh with her husband and son.
Cassandra Campbell has won multiple Audie Awards, Earphones Awards, and the prestigious Odyssey Award for narration. She was been named a “Best Voice” by AudioFile magazine and in 2018 was inducted in Audible’s inaugural Narrator Hall of Fame.