Pink Slip

The Story

A novel about the inescapable bonds of family and personal history,Pink Slipasks the question, in love, what must we reveal about ourselves? Twenty-five-year-old Lisa Diodetto needed a change. Her job editing holocaust memoirs for a prestigious New York publishing company barely paid the rent, and an ill-thought out affair with a married man had left her flattened by the wheels of romance. At the urging of her first cousin and lifelong best friend Dodie, she left New York for a job upstate in the editorial department of a big pharmaceutical company. It was a clean slate far from her working class upbringing in an Italian-American New Haven neighborhood, and she planned to make the most of it. Enter Mr. Eben Strauss, Vice-President of Corporate Development. A man of careful composure, a restrained sense of humor, and impeccable manners. A man who certainly wouldn't appreciate Lisa's big mouth and hot temper. A man who would never dream of compromising his position or anyone else's with any kind of workplace impropriety. A man surprisingly attracted by--and attractive to--Lisa. The relationship that ensues illustrates the very real dangers of falling in love-particularly falling in love with your boss, particularly falling in love with a boss who doesn't know the half of your personal history. Lisa is embarrassed to tell Strauss about her past--her crazy family, her wild escapades with Dodie--but she soon discovers that Strauss is keeping secrets, too. How both of them try to accept the truth about each other makes for a funny, sharp, and moving novel about the difficulties of intimacy and the imperfections of love.