Sample captures the unavoidable ugliness and beauty of the female adolescent experience in One Square Mile. This collection is the embodiment of the joyful awakening and ongoing confusion of growing up. — Shira Shiloah, best selling author

One Square Mile is infused with the nuances of youth and the nostalgia of a close bygone era. I loved Sample's quick, heartfelt prose. I looked forward to reading each story and its lovely way of traversing adolescence in the pre-internet days. I loved every minute of reading this collection. — Jessika Grewe Glover, Another Beast's Skin

One does not so much read One Square Mile as inhabit it[,] stories that so precisely [makes] you ache with longing for somewhere you've never really known until now. — Kathy Knapp, American Unexceptionalism

Elizabeth Bauer is a girl from a working-class family on Long Island in the 90s. She had her first kiss there, her first love and rejection. She grew up in that tiny town, having done everything from killing a slug with salt on a neighbor's porch to discovering the Playboy channel via illegal cable at a sleepover. But nothing is really about Elizabeth.

At times uplifting and heartbreaking at others, One Square Mile recalls what it's like to figure out how to be yourself, how difficult and exciting growing up will always be.