Helen is serving a life sentence at Sloatsburg women's prison for the murder of her children. Dr. Louise Forrest, a recently divorced mother of an eight-year-old boy, is the new chief of psychiatry there. Captain Ike Bradshaw is the corrections officer who wants her. And Angie, an ambitious Hollywood starlet contacted by Helen, is intent on nothing but fame. Drawing these four characters together in a story of shocking and disturbing revelations, The Big Girls is an electrifying novel about the anarchy of families, the sometimes destructive power of maternal instinct, and the cult of celebrity. "Devastatingly accurate.... Engrossing and beautifully rendered.” —The New York Times Book Review“The most unflinching, graphically sexual, violent, literary female fiction writer alive. . . . Susanna Moore writes the way Frida Kahlo painted.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review“The Big Girls carries a voyeuristic charge, the confessions so intimate you feel embarrassed for looking, but the whip-smart narration makes it impossible to turn away.” —The Plain Dealer “Hypnotizing. . . . A remarkable feat.” —The Washington Post Book World