“After writing a spate of short stories, [Sharon Solwitz] returns to the longer form with a ravishing sense of place . . . and a heightened, almost surreal, feel for how intense emotions alter our perception of the world, especially in youth. Solwitz’s surging, many-threaded, complexly insightful tale dramatizes not only personal crises, but also the violence of the infamous 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. Timely and timeless.”—Booklist (starred review)
“What makes Once, in Lourdes such a moving read is how deeply and finely Sharon Solwitz has observed and portrayed her characters. They are recognizable teenagers with recognizable desires and miseries and hardships, but they are so well rendered in their particulars that we follow them less and less as familiar types and more and more as the actual friends with whom we attempt to struggle through this part of life, making promises and pacts, breaking and keeping them, living and dying by them.”—Paul Harding, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Tinkers and Enon
“This astonishing novel dives deep into the minds and bodies of four teenagers at the height of the sixties. Self-loathing Kay, ethereal but deformed Vera, precariously balanced CJ, and stoic Saint are self-declared outcasts from what passes for normal in their school and families. Bonding through sexual awakening and confusion, love of one another and dismissal of the world’s intrusion on their freedom, the 4Ever friends decide on a suicide pact—and the reader is hooked into their intensity, on tenterhooks to find out who, how, and whether they will carry out their pledge. This is a story that reads achingly true to young angst, then, now, and always. It’s an achievement of remarkable empathy—and gorgeous prose.”—Janet Burroway, author of Raw Silk and Writing Fiction
“Sharon Solwitz has an ear so attuned to teen speech, teen humor, and, finally and most convincingly, teen angst that her novel crackles with urgency. She follows the rise and fall of adolescent moods, patient with their extremes and sympathetic to the neediness her characters struggle to hide. Once, in Lourdes will make you think you’re eavesdropping on what you’re not supposed to hear.”—Rosellen Brown, New York Times bestselling author of Before and After
“[An] honest and soul-baring novel about choice, fate, and the consequences of youthful idealism . . . a dark novel that knowingly depicts the confusion of being a teenager and the strong bonds of friendship that form at that young age.”—Publishers Weekly
