Pushcart Prize Award-winning author Elizabeth Ellen’s American Thighs tells the darkly comedic story of a thirty-one-year-old former child star’s journey from Hollywood to Elkheart, Indiana, experiencing for the first time the off-screen life of a high school sophomore.

Tatum Grant spent the first years of her life on various film sets and locations in Hollywood, never knowing a real childhood, before becoming impregnated by an older, award-winning actor. Fifteen years after his death, experiencing an existential crisis, Tatum leaves Hollywood, her mother and her daughter behind, on a quest to find herself. Posing as a 16-year-old student with the help of her daughter’s stolen identification, Tatum uses the talents she learned portraying various film characters to earn a spot on the cheer team, date a football player, and befriend the most popular girl at school.

Like Tom Perrota’s Election, the novel is told through the voices of students and teachers at Dobson High, as well as social media influencers, actors, and celebrity children back in Hollywood, readers follow as Tatum’s past catches up with her amidst a cross-country road trip turned police chase.

Elizabeth Ellen manifests typical teenage woes into a breathtaking, rib-breaking story of love, loss, and media. American Thighs strikes the same chord as Heathers but for the TikTok generation.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR AMERICAN THIGHS

"Gossip, delusion, sapphic mania, Britney Spears—American Thighs has everything I want from a novel in Elizabeth Ellen’s inimitable style. It’s fearless, it’s propulsive, it's wildly entertaining. I devoured this novel."

—Anna Dorn, author of Perfume & Pain

ELIZABETH ELLEN is the author of several books including the cult classics Fast Machine and Person/a. She has been published in such places as American Short Fiction, Catapult, BOMB, Muumuu House, Forever Magazine, Joyland, Salon, and Harper’s Magazine, and is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize for her story, “Teen Culture,” published in the collection, Saul Stories. She is the founder of Short Flight/Long Drive Books and is the current publisher and editor of the literary journal, Hobart. 

ON SALE 1.28.2025

ISBN: 9781960988355