Devil-Girl is a storyteller smaller than a stain and larger than life, a mythic figure roaming the globe. Born into Brooklyn housing projects and the nightmares of her immigrant family, she becomes a runaway in the human marketplace of the streets of New York. Accompanied by her sense of outrage and sense of humor, ghosts of the ancestors, and her prophetic vision, she moves from silence through rage into deep alliance with the marginalized. 

Poignant and fierce, this book is moving, beautifully written, and urgently relevant.

"Devil-Girl's stories are all of our stories, all of the 'discarded and demonized', all of us who have had to fight to survive, to fight to tell our truths. Achtenberg's wise survivor, Devil-Girl, is witness and seer, and her words are sustenance. There is much pain in this book, much wisdom, and a kind of beauty that sears itself into memory, a fierce beauty that is as necessary as air. Read this book." (Lisa D. Chave, author of Destruction Bay, In an Angry Season)

"Achtenberg is a cutting-edge voice in the literature of the post-globalization age, an era in which we are uprooted geographically and spiritually, and redefining what it means to be home. What a superbly written book! Read it and be changed." (Demetria Martinez, author of Mother Tongue)

"Stunning and original! Powerful 'make it new' language that creates - through the runaway energy and precise detail of the storytelling voice - a disturbing world in all its particularities, only to transcend it by grappling with what's at stake in the larger world." (Stratis Haviaras, founder and former editor of Harvard Review)

"An amazing piece of bravura writing! Devil-Girl takes us from destitution to seedy glamour as a homeless, vulnerable young woman tries to survive the savagery of the streets. Poignant and fierce, this book is moving, beautifully written, and urgently relevant." (Kathleen Spivack, author, director: Advanced Writing Workshop)

Book one in the Reflections of America series.

Modern History Press, an imprint of Loving Healing Press