Shred Sisters

LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE

No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister.

"I love this book. It moves like a souped-up pickup truck." - Patti Smith, author of Just Kids and M Train

From Betsy Lerner, celebrated author of The Bridge Ladies, comes a wry and riveting debut novel about family, mental illness, and a hard-won path between two sisters

It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilized. Meet the Shreds. Olivia is the sister in the spotlight until her stunning confidence becomes erratic and unpredictable, a hurricane leaving people wrecked in her wake. Younger sister Amy, cautious and studious to the core, believes in facts, proof, and the empirical world. None of that explains what's happening to Ollie, whose physical beauty and charisma mask the mental illness that will shatter Amy's carefully constructed life.

As Amy comes of age and seeks to find her place--first in academics, then New York publishing, and through a series of troubled relationships--every step brings collisions with Ollie, who slips in and out of the Shred family without warning. Yet for all that threatens their sibling bond, Amy and Ollie cannot escape or deny the inextricable sister knot that binds them.

Spanning two decades, Shred Sisters is an intimate and bittersweet story exploring the fierce complexities of sisterhood, mental health, loss and love. If anything is true it's what Amy learns on her road to self-acceptance: No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister.

Betsy Lerner is the author of the popular advice book to writers, The Forest for the Trees, and the memoirs Food and Loathing and The Bridge Ladies. She received an MFA from Columbia University in Poetry. A publishing professional for over thirty years, Lerner is a literary agent in New York. Shred Sisters is her first novel.