(step)sisters

Overview

Kiley loves her stepsister Nora, loves her so much she refuses to use the word step, believing it gives too much credit to the fathers who gave them nothing. The girls came up hard, watching over each other, their backs to the wall and their fists raised. Their small town and all its sad histories abandoned with their move to Philadelphia, where they work nowhere jobs and pocket the money they make in the city's underground economy. Their goal—a stash large enough for a down payment, their dream of owning a shop they'll call their own. But there are problems. The sketchy characters of the city's drug trade. The months-long trash strike and rats everywhere. Most troubling, Nora's demons, the ones she's tried so desperately to escape yet which rise just when their dream is within reach. (step)sisters offers an unforgettable portrait of struggle and addiction and hope and heartbreak, and above all, the love between two survivors who can only count on each other.

Author Biography

Curtis Smith has published over one hundred stories and essays. (step)sisters is his eighth novel and his seventeenth book.