December

When December opens, eleven-year-old Isabelle hasn't spoken a word in nearly a year. Four psychiatrists have abandoned her, declaring her silence to be impenetrable. Her parents are at once mystified and terrified by their daughter's withdrawal, and by their own gradually loosening hold on the world as they've always known it. Isabelle's private school, which until now has taken the extraordinary step of allowing her to complete her assignments from home, is on the verge of expelling her, forcing her parents to confront the possibility that what once seemed a quirk of adolescence, a phase, is perhaps a lifelong transformation, a swift and total retreat from which their daughter may never emerge. December paints an unforgettable picture of a family reckoning with a bewildering crisis, and of a critical month in the life of a bright, fascinating girl, locked into an isolation of her own making and from which only she can decide to break free.

Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop was born and raised in New York City. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude from Harvard University in 2001 with a B.A. in English and American Literature and Language. In 2004 she received her M.F.A. in fiction from the University of California at Irvine, where she was the recipient of the Schaeffer Writing Fellowship for the 2004–5 academic year. She is the author of the novel Fireworks, and has published stories in Wind, the Evansville Review, the Missouri Review, Red Rock Review, and the Indiana Review. Currently, she is living and writing in Savannah, Georgia.