Detroit Fairy Tales - by Elisa Sinnett (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Detroit Fairy Tales is a work of autobiographical fiction-or "speculative memoir"-that explores the lives of one struggling family with deep roots in their one-of-a-kind city.

In the spirit of Bastard out of Carolina and The Glass Castle, Detroit Fairy Tales is part a coming of age story and part an exploration of how trauma can reverberate through four generations. Hopeful, yet raw and unflinching, thirty-six vignettes tie together like a work of jazz to create a single, one of a kind work. Along the way, Detroit Fairy Tales challenges assumptions while it peals back the layers of love, trauma, hope, and resignation that is at the root of this not unusual American family.

Elisa and her five sisters are born and raised in the wealthy University District of Detroit where she longs to not stick out as a poor white kid. She is born with a "hole in her chest," a rare medical condition. That is but the first of a lifetime of struggles, as Elisa and her sisters must navigate a family clouded by life-defining tragedies that echo though the generations. The six girls make their own ways through a labyrinth of race, class, gender, mental illness, and sexual and domestic violence, each finding their escape, some with more success than others. Like everyone, Elisa does what she can, making the best choices she knows how to. And in the end, she must find her own peace and end the cycle of family secrets.Detroit Fairy Tales is a stunning story-never sensational, always honest and unexpected.

Review Quotes

"Detroit Fairy Tales is a stunner of a book ... Elisa Sinnett has summoned a glittering darkness, bleak, beautiful, mesmerizing and utterly unforgettable."-Junot Díaz, Pulitzer prize winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

"A stunning collection by an exciting new voice in experimental memoir, Elisa Sinnett's Detroit Fairy Tales is a devastating love letter to the indomitable soul of a grand American city-a soul that can never be foreclosed or gentrified. What is remembered lives. And long live Detroit in Sinnett's powerful debut."-Ariel Gore, author of The End of Eve, winner of the New Mexico Arizona Book Award, and founder of Hip Mama Magazine

"Clear-eyed heartfelt smart staccato funny terrible: Detroit Fairy Tales is all of this, and Elisa Sinnett's voice is a wonder."-Kathe Koja, award winning author of The Cipher, Under the Poppy, and Dark Factory

"More than a story about growing up in a certain time and place, Eilsa Sinnett's Detroit Fairy Tales explores how time and place are just as important to a narrative as the people experiencing their lives within it. ... With precise storytelling and captivating language, Detroit Fairy Tales is an enthralling read that considers who we are by looking at where we come from and how the past shapes our future."

-Chelsey Clammer, author of Circadian and BodyHome