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The Leonard Lopate Show
The Diary of a Teenage Girl: 'The Jane Austen of Juvenile Delinquents'

Between the ages of 15 and 18, until her death in 1999 of cystic fibrosis, a Pennsylvania teenager named Mary Rose wrote unguardedly in her journals, describing her fights with her mother, a magnet for abusive, criminal boyfriends; her own experiences with romance, sex, alcohol, and drugs; and living with cystic fibrosis. Gillian McCain discusses creating the book Dear Nobody: The True Diary of Mary Rose from diary entries and letters, edited with Legs McNeil. She’s joined by Mary Rose’s mother.