In Iowa: Ali Brown and Cameron Gale were this book’s first readers and cheerleaders. You’re both okay, I guess. Dan Beachy-Quick and Mark Baechtel shaped me as a writer and teacher, and provided Mr. Tremont’s best lines and lesson plans. Em Westergaard Hamilton, Jennie Wheeler Rothschild, Adrienne Celt, and Carly Schuna read early drafts and convinced me to keep going. Molly Rideout read a late draft and talked me off the ledge. Nick Wagner has been my favorite writing buddy, and Chris Rathjen was my consultant on Iowa topography and flora. Melissa Torres, Dana Watson, Sarah Aswell, Kate Herold, Hudson Heatley, Rick Heineman, Carrie Robbins, Nadia Manning, and Mary Hoeschen: you’re all wonderful. And the entire Grinnell and Plans community, without whom I could hardly face the world each morning, much less write a book. Thank [you] all.
In Wisconsin: Lifelong gratitude to Gail Gregory, Karen Ludvigsen, Camille Farrington, Michele McConnell, Debe Van Steenderen, Dan Williams, Heather James, and especially Nat McIntosh, who understood from the beginning.
At home: My giant, wonderful family, including several hundred cousins, aunts, uncles, steps and halfs and once removeds. Thanks especially to Val, Justin, Elodie, Helene, and all the Hestads, to Roger Backes and Sally Hestad for their unflagging support, to my whip-smart sister Megan, whose incredible eye for detail helped this book immeasurably, and to Eileen Backes, for everything. Finally, my deep and lasting gratitude to Natalie Kossar, for the thousand ways you support me every day. Thank you for putting up with me and all my envelopes.
M. MOLLY BACKES has lived in Wisconsin, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Illinois. She has taught students of all ages, and once got 150 of her middle-school students to write novels for National Novel Writing Month. About The Princesses of Iowa, her debut novel, she says, “I always identified with the kids who didn’t fit in, but one day I started wondering about the kids who did. What if you did everything ‘right,’ and it still wasn’t enough? What if being ‘perfect’ didn’t make you happy?” M. Molly Backes lives in Chicago with her family and greyhound, Zia. She teaches writing at StoryStudio Chicago and stops to pet every dog she sees.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2012 by M. Molly Backes
Cover photographs copyright © 2012 by plainpicture/Cultura (car); copyright © 2012 by plainpicture/Design Pics (girl); copyright © 2012 by Mark Hirsch/Getty Images (landscape)
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First electronic edition 2012
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Backes, M. Molly.
The princesses of Iowa / M. Molly Backes. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: After being involved in a drunk driving accident in the spring, Paige Sheridan spends the summer in Paris as an au pair and then returns to her suburban Iowa existence for her senior year of high school, where she begins to wonder if she wants more out of life than being popular, having a handsome boyfriend and all the latest clothes, and being a member of the social elite.
ISBN 978-0-7636-5312-5 (hardcover)
[1. Conduct of life — Fiction. 2. Popularity — Fiction. 3. High schools — Fiction. 4. Schools — Fiction. 5. Iowa — Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.B13222Pr 2012
[Fic] — dc23 2011018622
ISBN 978-0-7636-5989-9 (electronic)
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