Stories of A Girl

Teenage Dylan wakes up to a parent's nightmare — she’s in an apartment in New York City’s Hamilton Heights that she’s never been to before, she’s in bed with a boy she doesn’t recognize, she tastes alcohol on her breath but doesn’t remember drinking, and she’s been missing for days. The question isn't just where she’s been, but who she’s been.

Dylan’s process to uncover what transpired unlocks the buried trauma at the center of her life, and the mental disorder that has fractured her sense of self.

Connecticut-based author Kate McLaughlin stopped by House of Books in Kent, Conn., last week to discuss her newest novel for young adults from Macmillan, “Pieces of Me,” a portrait of a girl struggling to ground herself while living with a dissociative identity disorder (DID) diagnosis.

“DID can be very terrifying. It’s this way for the brain to protect itself and the body from trauma. It’s really kind of neat and scary at the same time,” McLaughlin said. She was inspired to write a different kind of mental health story around DID for young audiences. “It’s a disorder that doesn’t get a lot of media attention, and when it does it’s very sensationalized.” Women, McLaughlin cited, are more likely to be diagnosed, but also likely to be misdiagnosed.

Braving the gritty side of female adolescence in her fiction, McLaughlin’s previous novel, “What Unbreakable Looks Like,” portrayed the uncomfortable aftermath of a girl starting her life over after being rescued from a trafficking ring in what Kirkus called “A gut-punch story.”