Everything Grows
A Novel
In this LGBTQ+ YA coming-of-age novel, a teenage girl grapples with the suicide of a classmate and her mother's depression, while discovering her own gender fluidity and sexual identity.
Fifteen-year-old Eleanor Fromme just chopped off all of her hair. How else should she cope after hearing that her bully, James, just took his own life? When Eleanor's English teacher suggests students write a letter to a person who would never receive it to get their feelings out, Eleanor chooses James.
With each letter she writes, Eleanor discovers more about herself, even while trying to make sense of his death. And, with the help of a unique cast of characters, Eleanor not only learns what it means to be inside a body that does not quite match what she feels on the inside, but also comes to terms with her own mother's mental illness.
Set against a 1993-era backdrop of grunge rock and riot grrl bands, Everything Grows depicts Eleanor's extraordinary journey to solve the mystery within her and feel complete. Along the way, she loses and gains friends, rebuilds relationships with her family, and develops a system of support to help figure out the language of her queer identity.
'Awkward, affirming, and compassionate, this story about coming into one's identity will win over the hearts of its young adult audiences' — Forewood Reviews
'Everything Grows will grow inside you like a revelation, slowly unfolding to a shape that is vulnerable, raw and beautifully alive...' — Max Wolf Valerio, author of The Testosterone Files
Aimee Herman is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominated poet and performance artist based in Brooklyn, New York, looking to disembowel the architecture of gender and what it means to queer the body. Aimee is also the author of two poetry collections, to go without blinking (BlazeVOX books) and meant to wake up feeling (great weather for MEDIA). Her work has been widely published in the U.S. and internationally in literary journals including Lavender Review, EDUCE
, Sous Les Pave, and the Lambda Award-winning anthology Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics (Nightboat Books). Aimee has taught at various universities and colleges including: CUNY Grad Center, St Johns University (Queens), Malloy College (Long Island), Stoneybrook University (Long Island), City College of New York, and Metro State (CO). She lives in Brooklyn.
