"Twenty-four-year-old Natalie Taylor was leading a charmed life: she had a fulfilling job as a high school English teacher, a wonderful husband, Josh, a new house, and a baby on the way. Then, while visiting her sister, she gets the news that Josh has died in a freak accident. Four months before the birth of her son, Natalie is leveled by loss. What follows is an unexpected transformation as Natalie calls upon resources she didn't even know she had...

A candid and penetrating account of one exceptional but aloof high school teacher's transforming impact on his students in a tough working-class town near Boston. But be warned, this is no warm and fuzzy my-favorite-teacher story

"A dark romance evolves between a high schooler and her English teacher, in this breathtakingly powerful memoir about a young woman who must learn to rewrite her own story. "Have you ever read Lolita?" So begins seventeen-year-old Alisson's metamorphosis from student to lover and then victim. A lonely and vulnerable high school senior, Alisson finds solace only in her writing-and in a young, charismatic English teacher, Mr. North. He praises her as...