Fine Young People

In this "smart, irreverent secret history" novel, a high-school senior investigates the death of a star hockey player at her elite Jesuit school, where she discovers the rot at the heart of the institution--and the truth about her own past along the way (Stewart O'Nan).

Frankie is a good daughter, a loyal best friend, and a model student, coasting through her final semester at an elite Catholic prep school in a wealthy Pittsburgh enclave. But acceptance to her dream college leaves her unmoored. When a classmate takes his life after posting a cryptic message about Woolf Whiting--a former student hockey player who died in a presumed suicide years earlier--Frankie and her best friend, Shiv, decide to investigate Woolf's death as part of their journalism class project.

As the community mourns, a muffled conversation between Frankie's mom, who teaches history at the school, and the priest who teaches her philosophy class draws the girls further into unraveling the mysterious life and death of Woolf. Frankie speaks to his sister, now a high-powered lawyer in New York; his former girlfriend, who Woolf's mother is convinced knows more about his death than she has revealed; and his best friend. As she does, she discovers much more than she expected about the history of her supposed elite education--and the truth about her own past.

With a wry, send-up-the-patriarchy, wise-beyond-her-years narrator and a page-turning plot, Fine Young People is a cold-case mystery with a Hitchcockian twist and a portrait of a young woman searching for meaning in a world that values achievement above all else.

Author: Anna Bruno
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 07/29/2025
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9781643757001


Review Citation(s):
Booklist 07/01/2025 pg. 21
Publishers Weekly 07/14/2025

About the Author
Anna Bruno is the author of Fine Young People (Algonquin, 2025) and Ordinary Hazards (Atria, 2020). She teaches at the University of Iowa's Tippie College of Business and the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. Previously, Anna managed public relations and marketing for technology and financial services companies in Silicon Valley. She holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, an MBA from Cornell University, and a BA from Stanford University. She lives in Iowa City with her husband, two sons, and blue heeler.