CINDERLAND

A haunting debut memoir about the price of keeping secrets in small-town, Rust Belt America.

Mercury, Pennsylvania, had once been a thriving, vigorous city. But when Burns grew up there during the aftermath of “the Steel Apocalypse” that began in the late 1960s, life moved at a “barely detectable” pace. In 1991, the town suddenly emerged from its “waking sleep” to confront the shocking reality that a beloved piano teacher had been fondling his young female students. As a 10-year-old, Burns was one of the victims. Yet she chose to lie about the molestation because in Mercury, “a girl [couldn’t] escape her reputation,” and the seven girls who told the truth had faced devastating consequences. But silence had its own costs. Burns' capacity to love during adolescence became stunted by fear. She could not fully open her heart to a boy because her trust had been violated. Further, love also had the potential to root her to a town that she loved but desperately wanted to escape. Any relationships she did form were with “safe” boys, like those from her church or with those for whom love was a performance, much like the ones she gave on stage in high school drama productions. Her unquiet conscience never let her forget the fellow victims she had betrayed through her silence. In an ironic twist, Burns became one of seven homecoming princesses, girls as pure as new-made steel who had the love and approval of Mercury. But as she discovered, getting everything she wanted was “dirty business.” Only by leaving that world built by coal and iron and now foundering in its own ashes could she begin her process of purification through the written word.

A slim, lyrically evocative memoir.