Coming from the author of "Here on Earth", this is a funny and touching, sharp and tender, irresistible chronicle of a family coming apart at the seams, and of a young girl learning how to survive.

Told from Gretel Samuelson's sly and knowing perspective, "Local Girls" charts her progress as she navigates from childhood to the brink of womanhood, picking her way through the tragedies and absurdities of everyday life in a family which is rocked by divorce and disaster, bad judgement and fierce attachments.

Her father has left them, her chain-smoking mother Franny is falling apart and refuses to learn the simple lessons of life, her aunt Margot is in love with romance, her grandmother is talking to God, her perfect brother has fatal flaws, and even her best friend Jill - blonde, enviable and beautiful - is moving too fast into the unfathomable world of women.