Aurora Jeanine Johnson is an unwed mother from Savannah, Georgia, desperate to sculpt a new life and a new body in California, where the quest for the perfect butt or bicep reaches religious intensity.

Arnoldi s debut novel is a stunning portrait of two obsessed personalities and the perversely symbiotic relationship that draws them together. Spending every spare moment training at the gym, Aurora is barely getting by until she meets the man who will offer her everything she most desires.

Praise for Chemical Pink:
"Chemical Pink is a dazzling first novel entirely original, dizzyingly controlled, all ice-cool momentum on the surface and all shock below." Joan Didion

"One of the most unusual pieces of fiction I ve ever seen. Couldn t put it down. Comic and horrifying, sadistic and hilarious, tragic and funny all at the same time. It s as if the Marquis de Sade got loose again with his funny bone banging at our front door." Liz Smith

Katie Arnoldi, once a competitive bodybuilder, is also the author of The Wentworths, which Overlook published in March 2008. She lives in Southern California with her husband, the painter Charles Arnoldi, and their two children.