The Member of the Wedding (Carson McCullers)

Twelve year-old Frankie, the protagonist of Member of the Wedding, is the perfect template for the precocious little girl. Frankie is brilliant, precocious, and a little mean, whose mind is set ablaze by fantasies of escaping her small southern town. The clash of fantasy vs reality is the perfect metaphor for growing up. But even that description does not do this novel, or Frankie, justice. A Southern Gothic classic where the real horror is being a girl in a world too small for you.