After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away

Joyce Carol Oates

Harper Collins, Oct 13, 2009 - Young Adult Fiction - 304 pages

In the raw was how the world felt now. My feelings were raw, my thoughts were raw and hurtful like knife blades. . . . In the blue had been my place to hide, now In the raw there was nowhere to hide.

Jenna Abbott separates her life into two categories: before the wreck and after the wreck. Before the wreck, she was leading a normal life with her mom in suburban New York. After the wreck, Jenna is alone, trying desperately to forget what happened that day on the bridge. She's determined not to let anyone get close to her -- she never wants to feel so broken and fragile again.

Then Jenna meets Crow. He is a powerfully seductive enigma, and Jenna is instantly drawn to him. Crow is able to break down the wall that Jenna has built around her emotions, and she surprises herself by telling him things she hasn't told anyone else. Can Jenna bring herself to face the memories she's tried so hard to erase?

About the author

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the 2019 Jerusalem Prize, and has been several times nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award; and the New York Times bestseller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.

Bibliographic information

• Title: After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away
• Author: Joyce Carol Oates
• Edition: unabridged
• Publisher: Harper Collins, 2009
• ISBN: 0061756156, 9780061756153
• Length: 304 pages
• Subjects: Young Adult Fiction / People & Places / General; Young Adult Fiction / Romance / Contemporary; Young Adult Fiction / Romance / General; Young Adult Fiction / Social Themes / General