A riveting literary debut about the cost of keeping quiet Amy Jo Burns grew up in Mercury, Pennsylvania, a conservative Rust Belt town fallen sleepy after the steel industry's collapse. But the year Amy turned ten, her town woke up. That year, Howard Lotte, her beloved piano teacher, was accused of assaulting his female students. Among the countless girls questioned, only seven came out against Lotte, admitting his wandering hands. They were ostracized. As for the remaining girls'well, they were smarter. They lied. They said, He didn't. Amy Jo Burns was one of the girls who lied. But such a lie has its own consequences. In Cinderland, against a backdrop of fire and steel, shame and redemption, Burns tells of the boys she ran from and toward, the friends she abandoned, and the endless performances she gave to please a town that never trusted girls in the first place. Cinderland is the story of growing up in a town that both worshipped and sacrificed its youth, a town that believed being a good girl meant being a quiet one, a town most beloved by those it betrayed.