Wintergirls
novel by Laurie Halse Anderson

Wintergirls (2009) is a realistic fiction novel by the American author Laurie Halse Anderson. The novel was published in 2009 by Viking. The story focuses on a girl, Lia Overbrook, who has anorexia and self-harms. Lia struggles to cope with her mental illness while balancing everything else going on in her life. Some months after a fall out with her best friend Cassie, Lia receives the news that she has died from bulimia. This complicates Lia's life even more and forces her to confront her own illness.
Plot
Lia Overbrook, an 18-year-old girl, finds out that her ex-best friend Cassie has been found dead in a motel room. Cassie had called Lia 33 times the Saturday night and early Sunday morning of her death. However, Lia never answered the phone. Cassie was killed by her illness, bulimia, an overdose on sleeping pills mixed with alcohol, and in particular, from Boerhaave's Syndrome.
The public source identifies “Wintergirls” as novel by Laurie Halse Anderson. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Wintergirls, novel and Laurie.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8026455. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wintergirls” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.