Dear Jane, YA Epistolary Novel About a Suicidal Teen that Finds Solace in Brontë’s “Jane Eyre”
Industry: Books
Kit Kat's letters to Jane Eyre demonstrate the resilience derived from Jane's own dark narrative. This coming-of-age novel is about family and the power of a good book.
Athens, Greece (PRUnderground) January 3rd, 2019
“With sophisticated prose, this gritty coming-of-age story blends the familiar and the unthinkable as the lead learns to use her voice.” –KIRKUS REVIEWS
Marina DelVecchio’s Dear Jane is an epistolary novel based on her childhood memories of living in Athens, Greece and born into tangled roots of violence, prostitution, and neglect. Through her teen protagonist, Kit Kat, we experience what a childhood barren of love and affection feels like, and we are relieved when she is adopted by a Greek-American teacher from New York. Hope for emotional relief quickly dissipates upon the realization that her new mother changes Kit Kat’s birth name and forbids her to mention her birth family and experiences of abuse, going so far as to call her a liar and a whore. Silenced and in pain, 13-year-old Kit Kat locks herself in the bathroom and attempts to stab herself. With suicidal ideations overwhelming her and no one to confide in, she discovers a friend in literature. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre becomes her mother, sister, and best friend, guiding Kit Kat through High School and on to College with a story of girlhood steeped in pain and neglect that parallels her own. Through letters she addresses to Jane, we root for a young girl lost in a world without parental love and guidance as she attempts to empower herself, find her voice, and live a life in which she defines herself. This novel is not just about the tools we learn to use to save ourselves but also about the power that literature can have in grounding and connecting us to those outside of our own anguish.
Marina DelVecchio teaches writing, literature, and Women’s Studies as a full-time professor in North Carolina. Her essays appear on Ms. Magazine, the Huffington Post, Her Circle Ezine, and The New Agenda. She has worked as a contributing women’s literature reviewer for Her Circle Ezine and the Feminist Book Review, and as assistant editor of poetry and non-fiction for the QU Literary Magazine. Her essay titled “God’s Beauty Marks” has been chosen as a 2015 Finalist for the Tiferet Journal: Literature, Art, and the Creative Spirit and a craft essay on writing an immersion memoir centered on literature was published in 2015 by the Tishman Review. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at St. John’s University in N.Y., studying bibliotherapy and the impact literature can have on teens suffering from psychological trauma.
Copies of Dear Jane are available at all major booksellers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Black Rose Writing
Print and Electronic review copies available upon request
Contact: Christopher Miller / Social Media & Marketing Expert, Black Rose Writing
About Black Rose Writing
Black Rose Writing is an independent publishing house that strongly believes in developing a personal relationship with their authors. The Texas-based publishing company doesn’t see authors as clients or just another number on a page, but rather as individual people… people who deserve an honest review of their material and to be paid traditional royalties without ever paying any fees to be published.
