Bar Maid

Now a USA Today Bestseller! A sparkingly witty, poignant debut novel that is a Bright Lights, Big City for a post-Reagan, pre-Y2K Philadelphia--for readers of Normal People, Sweetbitter, Modern Lovers, and Less.

It's September 1987. Charlie Green is an eighteen-year-old romantic and aspiring alcoholic, whose great wish is to fall in love with a light-eyed girl on his first day of college and never look back. Charlie believes in the magic of bars and girls. He believes he can use these talismans to finally feel at home, an assurance his dim and privileged childhood did not provide. At the Sansom Street Oyster House, he meets Paula Henderson, a beautiful and deceptively soulful waitress who is the most overqualified bar maid in all the city--and perhaps the most alluring.

But there are obstacles in the Philly night between Charlie and his full heart. Drunks, louts, boyfriends--heroes too. And in Paula's eyes, Charlie becomes one. When she takes him home to New Hope, PA, to meet her very Catholic mother, the young couple must contend with the consequences of their pure love.

In this darkly comedic coming-of-age novel, Charlie Green needs to grow up fast. At stake is his soul.


Author: Daniel Roberts
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Published: 11/02/2021
Pages: 320
Weight: 1.1lbs
Size: 9.06h x 6.30w x 1.26d
ISBN: 9781950994274

About the Author
Daniel Roberts is a native New Yorker who attended the University of Pennsylvania, where the seeds were planted for his debut novel, Bar Maid. Roberts is the author of the plays Haunted House, which the New York Times called "Sparklingly original with characters that stick," and Brando, of which Time Out New York wrote: "An impressive piece of writing, recalling Edward Albee or John Guare." He lives in New York City with his wife and daughter.