Getting Over Jack Wagner
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Where are all the real rock stars?
Eliza is looking to date a rock star -- though she uses the term loosely. None of her boyfriends have been famous. Most have unbearable habits and overbearing mothers. A few only played show tunes. Still, they're intense. Pierced. Tragically stubbled. With a predilection for dressing in black. Eliza finds them deep -- in theory, anyway. But in reality, none comes close to the object of her original rock-star crush: actor/crooner Jack Wagner. When her latest catch turns out be another mama's boy, Eliza begins to realize love is nothing like her favorite '80s song.
Is she ready to face the music?
Just as Eliza is planning her next move, she's dealt an emotional triple-whammy involving her sister, her best friend, and a horrific blind date. That's when she realizes that only by taking a good look at her past -- and her tape collection -- will she ever be able to hear a different kind of song and live a different kind of life.
Elise Juska
Elise Juska's fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Ploughshares, Gettysburg Review, The Missouri Review, Good Housekeeping, the Hudson Review, and many other publications. She is the recipient of the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction from Ploughshares and her work has been cited in the Best American Short Stories. She lives in Philadelphia, where she is the director of the undergraduate creative writing program at the University of the Arts.
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