And Now You Can Go

Vendela Vida's fearless, critically acclaimed fiction debut follows the unpredictable recovery of a young woman as she tries to make sense of her life after an encounter at gunpoint. Accosted one afternoon in Riverside Park by a man who doesn't want to die alone, Ellis, a young grad student, talks her way out of the situation by reciting poetry to her desperate captor. He lets her go, but is she free? Rejecting the overtures of her kind-hearted boyfriend, the police, and the suitors who would like to save her, Ellis finds herself unable to escape the event. She leaves the city to visit her family; joins her mother on a medical mission to the Philippines. When she returns, Ellis discovers something more about lifeperhaps even how to take back her own.

Vendela Vida’s first book, <b>Girls on the Verge</b>, grew out of her M.F.A. thesis at Columbia University. She is co-editor of<i> The Believer</i> magazine, and lives in Northern California with her husband. This is her first novel.<br><br><br><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>