In this series of connected stories young Gretel Samuelson comes of age in a small-town neighbourhood and Alice Hoffman casts her characteristic spell over the lives of girls and women.

Told from Gretel's sly and knowing perspective, Local Girls charts Gretel's always unexpected progress as she navigates from childhood to the brink of womanhood, through a series of long hot summers, picking her way through the tragedies and absurdities of everyday life in the Samuelson family that is constantly rocked by divorce and disaster, bad judgment 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 (like the fact that smoking gives you lung cancer), her aunt Margot is in love with romance but falls for all the wrong men, her Jewish grandmother has made a pact with God, her perfect brother goes off the rails with fatal results, and even her best friend Jill, blonde, enviable and beutiful, is moving too fast into the unfathomable world of women. Beautifully written and dazzingly crafted, Local Girls forms the irresistible portrait of a family, peeling at the edges, and of a young girl learning how to survive in a world that doesn't make sense.