Christina the Astonishing by Marianne Leone; 2025. Hardcover.

Christina is a thirteen year old eighth grader at Precious Blood Junior High. She is growing up pazza according to her Italian immigrant mother, Rita, who curses a country that poisons children with chocolate milk and singing mice on television. The nuns at Precious Blood are giving Christina nightmares and facial tics with their daily descriptions of torture and martyrdom.

All she wanted as a fourth grader was to become a saint so she could be God’s best friend and go straight to heaven and avoid burning in hell for all eternity. At thirteen, though, Christina’s nightmares about eyeless martyrs have become dreams of escaping this place where she can see the entire trajectory of her life looming before her in a never-ending hamster loop that goes from Precious Blood Elementary School to La Sposa Bridal Shoppe and eventually across the street to Carmello’s Funeral Home without ever leaving her neighborhood only seven miles from Boston.

But Harvard Square beckons and Christina’s window to the world cracks open, along with the entire American culture of the 1960s, as she grows from girl to woman.