A Book-of-the Month Club alternate selection
Selected for Borders Bookstores "Original Voices" series
Washingtonian Magazine Book Club's April 2004 selection
One of three finalists for 2005 Library of Virginia Literary Award"A Year and a Day encourages comparisons and invites us to relive or anticipate our own healing process at the death of a parent. We negotiate with young Alice the dangerous terrain of her grief, her misdirected anger, her yearning for normalcy, and with her, we grow up a bit."
Susan Vreeland
author of Girl in Hyacinth Blue and The Forest Lover
"A Year and a Day is extraordinary--deeply insightful, heartfelt, soaring, and Leslie Pietrzyk perfectly nails the issues and adolescent motherless daughter would face after losing a mother to suicide."
Hope Edelman,
author, Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss
"Pitch perfect, heartfelt, hilarious….In this superbly crafted novel, Leslie Pietrzyk offers a spellbinding portrait of midseventies life in the small town of Shelby, Iowa, where private crisis inevitably becomes public conversation, and where redemption is generally sought elsewhere. Wry, witty, suffused with longing as well as hope, this is a wise and affecting story by an extremely talented writer."
Frederick Reiken
author of The Lost Legends of New Jersey and The Odd Sea
"In A Year and A Day, Leslie Pietrzyk has painted a soft-spoken, tender portrait of a young girl living through the crucial year after her mother's death. For anyone who has lost a loved one (all of us eventually) Alice and her voices will haunt you long after you have finished the book."
Loraine Despres
author of The Scandalous Summer of Sissy Leblanc
"Here's Alice, hoping and hunting for reasons and for comfort in the worst year of her life: if I had to be fifteen again, I'd want to be Alice—hungry and angry, vulnerable and smart—as she struggles to understand the secrecy of the lives of those she loves. This is a charming book, funny, sad, and, ultimately, comforting."
Beth Lordan
author of And Come Ye Back and And Both Shall Row
"Sweet, sad and achingly real, A Year and a Day is a richly textured rendering of a young girl coming to terms with her mother’s death. In this exquisitely tender story, Leslie Pietrzyk turns a deft hand to the mysterious rites of love, grief and the secrets that bind us together and tear us apart."
Judith Ryan Hendricks
Author of Isabel's Daughter and Bread Alone
Author Biography