Title: The American Girl
Description: In 1969, a young girl makes a trip from Coney Island to the swampy coastland on the  rural outskirts of Helsinki, Finland. There, her death will immediately become part  of local mythology, furnishing boys and girls with fodder for endless romantic imaginings.  Everyone who lives near the swamp dreams about Eddie de Wire, the lost American girl.  . . . For both Sandra and Doris, two lonely, dreaming girls abandoned in different  ways by their parents, this myth will propel them into their coming-of-age through  mischievous role-playing games of love and death, in search of hidden secrets, the  mysteries of the swamp, and the truth behind Eddie's death. The girls construct their  own world, their own language, and their own rules. But playing adult games has adult  consequences, and what begins as two girls just striking matches leads to an inferno  that threatens to consume them and tear their friendship apart.   Crime mystery  and gothic saga, social study and chronicle of the late sixties and early seventies,  a portrait of the psyche of young girls on the cusp of sexual awakening, The American  Girl is a bewitching glimpse of the human capacity for survival and for self-inflicted  wounds. Fagerholm is a modern-day heir to the William Faulkner heritage of family  tragedy, with a highly musical and literary prose style that is rich with wit and  literary allusions. The American Girl will teach you the meaning of trust as you  give yourself entirely to the original storytelling style of Monika Fagerholm.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Subjects: Fiction, Sexual behavior, Death, Teenage girls, Psychology, Swamps, Adolescence