Pg. 99: "Pretty Little Mistakes"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Heather McElhatton's Pretty Little Mistakes.

About the book, from the author's website:

Heather McElhatton’s singularly-original debut novel has more than 150 possible endings. From your first choice – where to go after school - you decide which of your dreams to chase. Should you travel abroad or get a masters degree? Marry or stay single? Become an artist, an entrepreneur, a homemaker, a doctor, or a drug dealer? There are hundreds of lives sewn inside one book, some end fabulously and others in total disaster.

You may end up in an opulent mansion or homeless down by the river. Happily married with your own corporation, or alone and pecked to death by ducks in London. As a Zen master in Japan or morbidly obese in a trailer park. The book asks, is it destiny or decision that controls our fate? In real life you can’t go back and do your life over – but in Pretty Little Mistakes, you can.

The genesis of this book is the age-old game we all play called the What if Game. What if I would have taken that job? What if I hadn’t broken up with that guy? What if I quit my job and took a trip around the world? We can’t stop wondering if we’ve made the right choices in our life. If it’s decision or destiny running our lives. In real life we can’t stop, turn back and get a do over – but in Pretty Little Mistakes, you can.

Read more about the book -- including reviews, an excerpt, and FAQs -- at the author's website and at the Pretty Little Mistakes site.

Heather McElhatton is a writer and independent producer for Public Radio International. Her commentaries and stories have been heard nationally on This American Life, Marketplace, Weekend America, Sound Money and The Savvy Traveler. Her new radio show is called Stage Sessions and is held in front of a live audience at the Fitzgerald Theater in St Paul, Minnesota.

Pretty Little Mistakes is her first novel.

The Page 99 Test: Pretty Little Mistakes.

--Marshal Zeringue