(Used) Durable Goods by Elizabeth Berg

On a sweltering Texas army base, twelve-year-old Katie navigates the tender, turbulent space between childhood and something harder. She’s waiting—for her body to change, for Dickie Mack to notice her, for the violence at home to finally stop. Since their mother’s death, Katie and her older sister Diane have lived in the shadow of their father’s unpredictable rage, each finding her own way to survive.

While Diane seeks refuge in her boyfriend’s arms, Katie retreats into silence, hiding in her room or escaping to her best friend’s house. But when her fierce admiration for Diane pulls her into an unexpected adventure, everything shifts. What follows is a summer that will mark Katie forever—teaching her about courage, heartbreak, and the complicated love that binds families together even as it threatens to break them apart.

Elizabeth Berg, bestselling author of Open House, brings her signature tenderness to this achingly beautiful coming-of-age story. With prose that captures the nearly visible vibrations between people, Berg illuminates the sadness of growing up and the strange gift of understanding life more deeply. Durable Goods is a novel about resilience—about the quiet strength it takes to endure, to protect those we love, and to emerge from darkness into something like grace.

Perfect for readers who appreciate literary fiction that doesn’t shy away from difficult truths, this is a story that lingers long after the final page, reminding us that survival itself can be an act of extraordinary bravery.

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