Synopses & Reviews
Its 1985 in a small factory town near Pittsburgh. Eight-year-old Karens parents are lifelong workers at the Anchor Glass plant, where one Saturday, an employee goes on a shooting spree, killing four supervisors, then himself. This event splits the young girls life open, and like her mother, she begins to seek comfort in obsessive rituals and superstitions. This beautifully evocative memoir chronicles the next fourteen years, as Karen moves through girlhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. It illuminates small-town factory life; explores a complicated mother-daughter bond; thoughtfully unfolds a smart, but insecure girls coming of age; achingly recounts her attempts to use sex to fit in; and ultimately uncovers the buried secret from her childhood—a medical file with an unbearable report. The Girl Factory deftly travels the intersections of memory and origin. Karens body remembers details her mind has tried to control. As the young woman mines her interior landscape for answers, certain questions persist. Where does memory live—in the body or the mind? And can you rewrite the story of your past?
Review
“Karen Dietrich can stop your heart with a sentence. The Girl Factory is fierce and lyrical, more memorable with every page. And somehow, in setting forth the still-smoking particulars of her girlhood in a Pennsylvania factory town, she reminds us how alike we all are, and how human. This book is stunning—a glinting, piercing wonder.”—Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife
Review
“Karen Dietrich can stop your heart with a sentence.
The Girl Factory is fierce and lyrical, more memorable with every page. And somehow, in setting forth the still-smoking particulars of her girlhood in a Pennsylvania factory town, she reminds us how alike we all are, and how human. This book is stunning—a glinting, piercing wonder.”—Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife
“The raising of girls through the prism of men’s desire becomes an unsettling, suspenseful theme in this affecting first work. . . . Dietrich works beautifully by understatement, allowing her subtle clues to paint a terrifying world for the innocent protagonist.” —Publishers Weekly
“Poetically written and urgently paced, The Girl Factory is the haunting story of a small-town girl finding her place in a family with big-time secrets. Karen Dietrich brings an original voice to her indelible tale.” —Janice Erlbaum, author of Girlbomb and Have You Found Her “Exquisitely written in delicious language and detail; Dietrich’s The Girl Factory evokes the best kind of memoir writing.” —Domingo Martinez, author of the New York Times bestseller The Boy Kings of Texas
“Poet Dietrich recounts growing up in the factory town of Connellsville, Pennsylvania. The youngest of three girls, Dietrich takes after her restless mother, adopting many of her obsessive compulsive habits. As a young girl, she’s fascinated by violence and death, and the shooting of four employees at the factory where her parents work leaves her haunted. As she moves on to junior high and high school, Dietrich finds herself becoming more and more of an outsider, teased mercilessly by her peers. Like many girls her age, she turns to boys to get validation, falling into a serious relationship with a football player who is referred to by his teammates as “Psycho.” College provides Dietrich with an opportunity for escape, and she defies her mother’s wishes by choosing to join her older sister in Pittsburgh rather than staying closer to home. Dietrich touches lightly on an instance of childhood sexual abuse, but mostly her memoir is a thoughtful meditation on female sexuality, gender politics, and the way family shapes one’s identity.”
—Booklist
Synopsis
A lyrical, finely crafted, and absolutely absorbing coming-of-age memoir about a young girl from a Pennsylvania factory town. After a shooting at the local factory where her parents work, eight-year-old Karen finds comfort in obsessive rituals and superstitions. As the years pass, she begins to understand her mothers unusual behavior and their complicated relationship until a shocking discovery shatters her world and disturbing memories begin to surface.
About the Author
Karen Dietrichis an adjunct English instructor at The University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg and Westmoreland County Community College. Her poems and essays have appeared in Pittsburgh City Paper, Nerve, The Bellingham Review, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, PANK Magazine, and elsewhere.