The Worst Kind of Girl Paperback – August 12, 2025

There's a good reason Susan Rukeyser's writing has been described as "Sharp as a cholla and joyful as a roller disco" (Gayle Brandeis). With a compulsive energy, The Worst Kind of Girl reveals the never-end-ing desire to truly know oneself, no matter how surprising and ever-changing that knowledge might be. When her husband disappears and is presumed dead, 50-year-old Paula Winger leaves her comfortable East Coast life to buy the rundown Hi-Dez Motel, near Joshua Tree, California. Hoping for community and reinvention, things change radically when she falls in love with Sky, a woman, after a lifetime of men. Paula draws suspicion as, all around her, bodies turn up or go missing, but she's busy reckoning with her identity at midlife, the ordinary traumas of girlhood, bodies, bigness, and sexual fluidity. Paula worries about her troubled adult niece, Gerry, and becomes determined to save her some time and trouble. The Worst Kind of Girl invites the reader into a conversation about love and life and art and the joy we feel when we finally recognize ourselves. Filled with generosity and wisdom, this is a novel by a writer who has found her voice. Read more