Book Description

Meet Georgia. She lives in Florida and she's never far from the ocean or a pool. She's a nail-chewer, a scab-picker, a daydreamer, and everything that a little girl struggling under the awkward pain of growing up should be. She's the child-hero of the nine linked stories in Heather Sellers' Georgia Under Water, and her family, no matter how hard she tries, is going in all directions 'like a man-o-war after you poured sugar on it. 'In her remarkable debut collection, Sellers offers an honest, bittersweet, and often funny picture of adolescence. Georgia is the daughter of an alcoholic father and a despairing mother, and she's torn between pleasing her parents and saving herself. She knows what it's like to straddle a fence with barking dogs on both sides. 'I knew this: we love our parents because we have been inside of them. They haven't been in us. It's hard for them to be kind. It's easier when you've come from within. 'Heather Sellers' unpretentious, vernacular prose allows Georgia a persuasive mix of innocence and experience. She gives her young heroine a voice perfectly balanced, deftly avoiding both nostalgia and bitter condemnation. These are miraculous stories of survival, perhaps even forgiveness. To some of us Georgia's life would be unthinkable. Sellers makes us believe it is well worth living.