Teenage Waistland

“You all believe that losing one-hundred-plus pounds will solve everything, but it won’t. Something far heavier is weighing on you, and until you deal with that, nothing in your lives will be right.”

 –Betsy Glass, PhD, at first weekly group counseling session for ten severely obese teens admitted into exclusive weight-loss surgery trial

 

Patient #1: Female, age 16, 5'4", 288 lbs.

• Thrust into size-zero suburban hell by remarried liposuctioned mom. Hates new school and skinny boy-toy stepsister.
• Body size exceeded only by her big mouth.

 

Patient #2: Male, age 16, 6'2", 335 lbs.

• All-star football player, but if he gets “girl surgery,” as his dad calls it, he’ll probably get benched.
• Has moobies—male boobies. Forget about losing his V-card—he’s never even been kissed.

 

Patient #3: Female, age 15, 5'6", 278 lbs.

• Morbidly obese and morbid, living alone with severely depressed mother who won’t leave her bed.
• Best and only friend is another patient, whose dark secret threatens everything Patient #3 believes about life.

 

Told in the voices of patients Marcie Mandlebaum, Bobby Konopka, and Annie “East” Itou, Teenage Waistland is a story of betrayal, intervention, a life-altering operation, and how a long-buried truth can prove far more devastating than the layers of fat that protect it.

Contains an afterword by Jeffrey L. Zitsman, MD, director of the Center for Adolescent Bariatric Surgery at Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital

"Marcie, East, and Bobby are obese--though they don't like that word--and everything they do, think, and believe about themselves is determined by their weight. The possibility of rescue arrives when all three are selected for a clinical trial that allows them to undergo bariatric 'Lap-Band' surgery, which physically restricts their eating and requires them to be heavily monitored by doctors and attend group support sessions. Through Marcie (smart, beautiful, and sharp-tongued), East (quiet, sweet, and terribly lonely), and Bobby (the football player ashamed of his moobies, or 'man boobies'), Biederman (Unraveling) and debut author Pazer will win over readers, although East, whose obese mother refuses to leave the house, is this novel's center and soul. Friendships are tested, romance blooms, and hopes remain high as they navigate the complicated family pressures they face and changes that the surgery brings to their lives--not always for the better. Without sidestepping the seriousness of the teens' weight or the surgery they undergo, the authors offer an important and hopeful story about a little-discussed subject that affects many. Ages 14 — up. (Nov.)" Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright PWyxz LLC)

Told in the voices of teen patients in an exclusive weight-loss surgery trial, "Teenage Waistland" is a story of betrayal, intervention, a life-altering operation, and how a long-buried truth can prove far more devastating than the layers of fat that protect it.

Lynn Biederman is the coauthor of the acclaimed young adult novel Unraveling, available from Laurel-Leaf Books. Even though she has degrees in both law and library and information science, Lynn would absolutely love to go to culinary school . . . if only tuition were free. Visit her at lynnbiederman.com.

 

During her eclectic career, Lisa S. Pazer has written economic analysis columns in trade magazines, financial commentary on Wall Street, lectures for Russian bankers after the fall of the Berlin Wall, business plans for the software company she cofounded, and much more. With Teenage Waistland, Lisa has finally come home to her first love—fiction. Visit her at www.LisaPazer.com.