Save Your Own

I am a full-grown woman who looks like a ten-year-old boy, and not even a very handsome or cute one at that ... My mind, thankfully, has more to recommend it.

So begins Save Your Own, a wicked satire as well as a rewarding story of self-transformation. Gillian Cormier-Brandenburg, intensely cerebral, narcoleptic, and a virgin, is in her final year at Harvard Divinity School. She needs simply to write her thesis and collect her diploma. But Gillian's life takes a sharp U-turn when the faculty deem her thesis topic, secular conversion, unsuitable and threaten to cancel her funding. Determined to prove them wrong, she sets out to gather data and takes a job at a halfway house for addicted women.

Here she must quickly transform herself from obedient graduate student into hardcore authority figure. The women push every limit she has, and Gillian finds herself at once repelled by their crass ways and in awe of their gutsy impulsiveness. Ultimately, they inspire her to realize her own true impulses and desires, as well as her need for love, which she's ignored for too long.

Infused with a buoyant humor and striking intelligence, Save Your Own announces the arrival of a sparkling new voice in contemporary fiction.

Meet Gillian Cormier-Brandenburg: a virginal, narcoleptic, atheistic Harvard Divinity School student struggling to finish her Ph.D. thesis. When her fellowship is revoked, Gillian must venture outside the walls of academia in search of a new source of income as well as interview subjects for her dissertation. She takes a job at Responsibility House, a halfway house for recovering addicts. Here pintsize Gillian is charged with the unlikely task of imposing order on unruly tenants, including motorcycle-obsessed Janet, impulsive former prostitute Florine, and self-righteous Stacy, who begin to inspire her to rethink her own dreams and desires.

A delightful read for all those who have ever wished they could be a little more than they are, Save Your Own is the perfect self-made Cinderella story.

In her final year at Harvard Divinity School, Gillian Brandenburg must quickly transform herself from obedient graduate student to hardcore authority figure at a halfway house in order to gain supporting evidence for her thesis about spiritual transformation. Ultimately, the women inspire her to realize her own true impulses and desires.

Meet Gillian Cormier-Brandenburg: a virginal, narcoleptic, atheistic Harvard Divinity School student struggling to finish her Ph.D. thesis. When her fellowship is revoked, Gillian must venture outside the walls of academia in search of a new source of income as well as interview subjects for her dissertation. She takes a job at Responsibility House, a halfway house for recovering addicts. Here pintsize Gillian is charged with the unlikely task of imposing order on unruly tenants, including motorcycle-obsessed Janet, impulsive former prostitute Florine, and self-righteous Stacy, who begin to inspire her to rethink her own dreams and desires.

A delightful read for all those who have ever wished they could be a little more than they are, Save Your Own is the perfect self-made Cinderella story.

ELISABETH BRINK worked in publishing, counseling, and high-tech marketing before earning a Ph.D. in American literature. Since then she has taught writing and literature at Harvard, Tufts, and Boston College. Her fiction has garnered her fellowships in Prague and St. Petersburg, and her stories were nominated for a Pushcart Prize by the late Andre Dubus. Save Your Own is her first novel. She lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts.