Fine Young People

A smart, contemporary, page-turning campus novel—Prep meets I Have Some Questions for You—in which a high-school senior investigating the death of a star hockey player at her elite Jesuit school discovers the rot at the heart of the institution, as well as some surprising truths about her own past.

Frankie is a good daughter, a loyal best friend, and a model student, coasting through her final semester at an elite Catholic prep school in a wealthy Pittsburgh enclave. But acceptance to her dream college leaves her unmoored. When a classmate takes his life after posting a cryptic message about Woolf Whiting, a former student who died in a presumed suicide years earlier, she begins to question whether getting what she wants will ever be enough.

As the community mourns, a muffled conversation between Frankie's mom, who teaches history at the school, and the priest who teaches her philosophy class, captures her imagination. Soon, Frankie is drawn into an investigation of the life and death of Woolf, who had been a legendary star hockey player with the brightest of futures. Frankie speaks to Woolf's sister, Maddie, now a high-powered lawyer in New York; his former girlfriend, Susanna Mercer—who Woolf's mother is convinced knows more about Woolf's death than she has revealed; and his best friend, Vince McMahon, and as she does she discovers the rot at the heart of her supposedly elite education. 

With a wry, up-the-patriarchy, wise-beyond-her-years narrator in Frankie and a page-turning plot, Fine Young People is a cold-case mystery with a Hitchcockian twist and a portrait of a young woman searching for meaning in a world that values achievement above all else—perfect for anyone who loves a campus novel with a decidedly contemporary voice.

Anna Bruno is a writer and teacher at the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business. Previously, Anna managed public relations and marketing for technology and financial services companies in Silicon Valley. She holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, an MBA from Cornell University, and a BA from Stanford University. She lives in Iowa City with her husband, two sons, and blue heeler. Ordinary Hazards is her first novel.