Sara's world is circa 1984, Victoria, B.C., Canada's prettiest city.But over at Mt. Douglas (a.k.a. Mt.Drug)High, all the girls have feathered hair, and the sweet scent of Love's Baby Soft can't hide the musk of raw teenage anger, apathy and desire. Sara longs to leave her stoner boyfriend and pothead father -- maybe she could move to New York and become a model, like the glossy, good girls in fashion magazines.But her only salvation comes in the willowy form of the mysterious Justine -- the girl in the torn skirt.Pulled by this spectral figure, Sara sets off on a feverish, frenetic odyssey into Victoria's underworld of hookers and johns, junkies and thieves, runaway girls and skater boys, and ultimately a violent tragedy.

The Torn Skirt is one of the most provocative, original, and brilliantly energetic coming-of-age novels to appear in a long time.First-time novelist Rebecca Godfrey gives voice to a young woman who careens between defiance and vulnerability, between street smart and naive, possessed by a spirit that flashes from stony deadness to unabashed hope. The Torn Skirt offers a small town adolescent world rarely seen -- dark and restless, often brutally funny, and laced iwth the fear of not fitting in, of feeling too much pain, of feeling no pain at all.A lyrical, word-perfect story that soars with an honest understanding of the teenage condition, The Torn Skirt is a powerful new piece of literary fiction.

REBECCA GODFREY was an award-winning novelist and journalist. Her first novel, The Torn Skirt, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Under the Bridge received one of Canada's largest literary awards, the British Columbia Award for Canadian Nonfiction, as well as the Arthur Ellis Award for Excellence in Crime Writing. She held an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and received fellowships from Yaddo and The MacDowell Colony. She taught writing at Columbia University, and lived with her family in upstate New York. She died in 2022.

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