Girls in Eden

Abstract

This thesis, entitled Girls in Eden, is a coming-of-age novel set in small-town America in the late 1990s, with the backdrop of the burgeoning opioid crisis. Throughout the story, two girls become tangled up in each other's lives — despite, or perhaps because of, the differences between them, and the bad blood between their families. It is a book about sickness and recovery, friendship and rivalry, and above all, family — whether biological or chosen.