"Get ready to meet a quirky and poignant heroine who will grab you from the first page and won't let you go. Love, grief, loss, confusion, the search for identity–it's all here, and it all feels fresh and new. Laura Catherine Brown is a terrific new writer who shoots straight from the heart."
–DANI SHAPIRO
Author of Slow Motion

All lives contain growth spurts–physical ones, most obviously, but emotional ones as well. Laura Catherine Brown's powerful fiction debut focuses on just such a crucial time in the life of a determined young woman. For nineteen-year-old Mandy Boyle, moving away to college means a chance to sever ties with her impoverished blue-collar family and strike out on her own. But Mandy is soon transformed in ways she had never imagined. Her father's sudden death sets in motion a wrenching chain of events that forces Mandy to grow up fast. The stage when a fetus first shows signs of life is known as the "quickening." This is the story of Mandy's adult quickening–an engrossing read about the search for identity, reckoning with the past, weathering unexpected twists of fate, and at last choosing a life of one's own. . . .