In Laura Moriarty's extraordinary first novel, a young girl tries to make sense of an unruly world spinning around her. Growing up with a single mother who is chronically out of work and dating a married man, 10-year old Evelyn Bucknow learns early how to fend for herself. Offering an affecting portrayal of a troubled mother/daughter relationship, one in which the daughter is very often expected to play the role of the adult, the novel also gives readers a searing rendering of the claustrophobia of small town midwestern life, as seen through the eyes of a teenage girl. Evelyn must come to terms with the heartbreaking lesson of first love--that not all loves are meant to be--and determine who she is and who she wants to be. Stuck in the middle of Kansas, between best friends, and in the midst of her mother's love, Evelyn finds herself...in The Center of Everything. Since earning her M.A. from the University of Kansas, Laura Moriarty won the George Bennet Fellowship for Creative Writing at Phillips Exeter Academy. This is her first novel. She's at work on her next novel and lives in Portland, Maine.

"Ordinarily, I would rather live in a small Midwestern town with love or loss than read a novel about a 10-year-old girl doing so, but Moriarty pulls it off. The secret to her success is a pitch-perfect voice and unfailing restraint. She's so good at portraying the charming mixture of egotism and insecurity, humility and grandiosity that marks adolescence....By listening closely to the innocence and perception of adolescence, she's invented a moral geometry that allows her to skewer and cherish simultaneously. There's no cheating in this novel, no phony breakthrough, or precious reconciliation, just a sweet, often comic series of tender moments spun from real-life battles and moments of kindness among unsorted laundry." Ron Charles, The Christian Science Monitor (read the entire CSM review)

"This impressive debut is a marvelously satisfying story . . . Moriarty eschews tough questions . . . competing loves and loyalties of adolescence." Christina Schwartz, author of Drowning Ruth

"Deadpan and dead on, this funny, moving portrait reads like To Kill a Mockingbird updated for our time." Mark Costello, author of Big If

"A pleasantly wry, spunky debut . . . Moriarty's gutsy opener is hard not to like." Kirkus

"Intelligent and charming debut novel." Elle Magazine, July issue

"Moriarty's enchanting novel passes too quickly." Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"Realistic and familiar as a summer day in Kansas — brave and gritty, strong voiced and spare." O Magazine

"So infectious that one never wants to put it down." Library Journal

In Moriarty's extraordinary first novel, a young girl tries to make sense of an unruly world spinning around her. Growing up with a single mother who is chronically out of work and dating a married man, ten-year old Evelyn Bucknow learns early how to fend for herself.