This Angel on My Chest
University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date: October 5, 2015
Winner of the 2015 Drue Heinz Literature Prize
From contest judge Jill McCorkle, author of Life After Life:
“A powerful and moving collection. These stories are held together by the experience of grief; a husband dying too soon and a wife left to go on. There is an abundance of wit, and wise observations about life. I always felt firmly rooted in the emotion, startled again and again by the weight of the simplest everyday objects and situations, against a backdrop of loss.”
A Year and a Day
William Morrow
February 2004
Taking its title from the pop-psychology idea that it should only take a year to get over the death of a loved one, A Year and a Day is an intense and deeply affecting portrait of how the human heart counters tragedy and can spin hard won triumph out of the deepest despair.
Susan Dooley, The Washington Post:
“With impressive attention to detail, Pietrzyk successfully recreates life in the ’70s in a small Iowa town.”
Pears on a Willow Tree
Avon Books
October 1998
Pears on a Willow Tree is a multigenerational roadmap of love and hate, distance and closeness, and the lure of roots that both bind and sustain us all.
Publisher’s Weekly:
“A family saga comprising 16 self-contained chapters, each a monologue (or dialogue) featuring one of four women in a prolific Polish-American clan, this compelling debut is an example of the novel-in-stories at its best… Reading this novel is like leafing through a family photo album (one of Pietrzyk’s favored motifs) except that, once you pick up this book, it’s hard to put it down.”