Crooked Little Heart

Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the acclaimed author of Bird by Bird comes an exuberant, richly absorbing novel about a family for whom the joys and sorrows of everyday life are magnified under the glare of the unexpected. • "Eloquent, detailed, emotionally honest... Lamott deserves praise for telling it like it is." —People Rosie Ferguson, in the first bloom of young womanhood, is obsessed with tournament tennis. Her mother is a recovering alcoholic still grieving the death of her first husband; her stepfather, a struggling writer, is wrestling with his own demons. And now Rosie finds that her athletic gifts, once a source of triumph and escape, place her in peril, as a shadowy man who stalks her from the bleachers seems to be developing an obsession of his own...