The Miss America Family — Julianna Baggott

Pixie Kitchy was once Miss New Jersey. Now she's married to a dentist, an ex-quarterback in turtled golf pants. Her ten-year-old daughter, Mitzie, wears Bo-peep pincurls and twirls baton. Her sixteen-year-old son, Ezra, the person who knows her best, is caught up in his fling with the podiatrist's daughter. And Pixie is consumed by the past. She confides, "I was a housewife, and I became dangerous. Sometimes it's the only way possible to regain footing in the world." In this high-wire mixture of absurdity and pathos, hilarity and darkness, one American family finds out that there is no such thing as the perfect American family, and, for better or for worse, they come together and start anew.