Tell Me One Thing

by Kerri Schlottman

Outside a rural Pennsylvania motel, nine-year-old Lulu smokes a cigarette while sitting on the lap of a trucker. Recent art grad Quinn is passing through town and captures it. The photograph, later titled "Lulu & the Trucker," launches Quinn's career, escalating her from a starving artist to a renowned photographer. In a parallel life, Lulu fights to survive a volatile home, growing up too quickly in an environment wrought with drug abuse and her mother's prostitution. Decades later, when Quinn has a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of Art and "Lulu & the Trucker" has sold at auction for a record-breaking amount, Lulu is surprised to find the troubling image of her young self in the newspaper. She attends an artist talk for the exhibition with one question in mind for Quinn: Why didn't you help me all those years ago? Tell Me One Thing is a portrait of two Americas, examining power, privilege, and the sacrifices one is willing to make to succeed. Traveling through the 1980s to present day, it delves into New York City's free-for-all grittiness while exposing a neglected slice of the struggling rust belt.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Collections, Literary Fiction

246 pages, Paperback

First published January 31, 2023

About the author

Kerri Schlottman is a writer of literary fiction novels, most recently Daytime Moon (Unnamed Press, May 2026), which was named a 2026 Most Anticipated Book by Pop Sugar Magazine. Her novel Tell Me One Thing was a 2025 Storytrade Literary Fiction Finalist, a two-time 2024 PenCraft Fiction Award Winner, a 2023 American Book Fest Best Literary Fiction Book Finalist, and a Shelf Awareness Best Book This Week. Kerri works to support artists, writers, and performers in creating new work and is a part-time graduate professor in arts administration at NYU.

Reviews

[Megan Strang · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an unexpectedly wonderful book for me. Unexpected because it hasn’t had all the press and accolades; I heard about it due to an author event my bookstore is hosting next month. It’s a short book, only about 200 pages, but it packs a lot of character development and emotion into those pages.

Lulu and Quinn meet one day in a truck-stop town. Lulu, age 10, lives in the local trailer park and Quinn, an aspiring photographer, is just passing through. They strike up a friendship and Lulu shows her around while Quinn takes some photos. One photo is of Lulu on a trucker’s lap, and Quinn takes it hastily as she’s leaving, only fully seeing later how problematic the situation likely was. We then follow Quinn and Lulu as their lives diverge over the next 30 years. We see Quinn’s successes and failures in her career and with friends and loved ones. We see Lulu struggle to grow up and rise out of her circumstances.

The characters - Quinn and Lulu, but also the supporting cast - shine in this novel. No one is perfect here and it’s a difficult read in terms of potential triggers for sexual abuse, neglect, and drug use/addiction. But the emotion and rich relationships that Schlottman is able to evoke over such a long period of time, but in so few pages, is really remarkable.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story follows two lives, one of the photographer and the other, the photographed. It's told with raw and honest prose and alternating distinctly contrasting voices. There is an amazing cast of supporting characters I felt such empathy for. The reader steps into the glamor of 80s photography in New York City and also the beginning of the opioid crisis.
It is a look at redemption and at the same time how we create the paths that define us.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

TELL ME ONE THING is a beautiful story about some not so beautiful things related to class, power, and privilege.

I finished this book last night and am still thinking about the characters. I found myself empathizing with the main characters just much as the supporting characters. I’m still thinking about Lulu and Quinn, but also BB and Billy!!

I love a book that is equally character driven as it is plot driven— Every character had an important story and as I got through each chapter, it was like peeling back so many layers of each of their lives!

My wheels are definitely spinning after reading this book. This story got me thinking about context, and how all of us have a story to tell. Nothing is just as it appears. In a world with high speed technology and social media, we are all creators and documenters to an extent, but what about all the things that are left unsaid? The people left behind?

There are a lot of heavy topics in this book related to power, privilege, drugs, and class, but they’re all relevant to issues going on today. As soon as I finished this book, I wanted to discuss it, which his why I’d recommend it for book clubs. I can also see this book being a good choice for college English classrooms, where students are researching and writing on real-world topics related to class and having to analyze how that issue is portrayed in a fictional book.

This book is heartbreakingly beautiful. I felt deeply for the characters, and found myself really glued to each section.

Thank you, Kerri, for not only sending me an ARC but also sending me the finished copy! I hope to see this book in the hands of many others!

[Rhiannon Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.



I've already started my Best Books of 2023 list because of this book.

Clocking in at just 216 pages, Tell Me One Thing circles around a single Polaroid photo taken in 1980 and spans the years between its creation and the photographer's 2019 artist retrospective. Following both the artist's and subject's storylines, readers are given up close examples of "two Americas." Each woman faces many of the same obstacles, but their experiences are wildly different. Quinn watches her loved ones waste away from AIDS and drugs while she struggles to make a career out of her photography. Lulu tries to scrabble together a bare-bones existence, feeling "she’s been running behind all her life, trying to catch up to something." After an arrest, she wonders "why is she the one here, in the cell" causing me to envision Blake Lively's hospital bed scene in The Town.

In addition to heartwrenching, raw scenes of Quinn and Lulu's hungers, betrayals, and acts of forgiveness, author Kerri Schlottman layers themes of permissions, privacies, and the ownership of art. I will recommend this gut-punch novel all year to anyone who will listen, while impatiently awaiting Schlottman's next work. This reading experience has also reignited my mission to dive deeper into independent press offerings because unfortunately I'm just not finding stories like this coming out of the "big" mainstream publishers.




Come chat with me about books here, too:
Blog | Instagram

[Marjorie Hudson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Schlottman skillfully sets the hard core world of a struggling photographer artist against the world of one of her subjects, a random young girl who is clearly in a bad situation. By placing their lives in parallel storylines the author breaks a boundary, which all great art does, lifting up its heartbreaking model and asking the question, once we SEE art, how can it not change and break us? Can art make a difference by making us more tender? Or does it exploit and separate us by making a new boundary, objectifying the subject? And these two worlds and the questions they raise break my heart. I loved and recognized the dire eighties moment Schlottman explores, when drugs and AIDS began to crush a new generation. And I remain heartbroken by the other world this artist of words unveils, the world of broken children whose lives are rebroken by the systems we've set up to control them, rarely letting compassion break through.

[Jenny Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic read. Brilliant character studies. Thoughtful and immersive.

[Thomas Kelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing read following the lives of Quinn a lady who is always carrying a camera whether it is a 35 mm or a polaroid instamatic who on an off trip with her best friend since third grade and maybe her boyfriend or at least friend with benefits. The trip is to a small town called Riverdale Pennsylvania where Billy needs to pick up a package. With some extra time, Quinn ends up taking some pictures of LuLu but there is one picture that could be a life changer for at least one. This picture is LuLu at the age of ten years old who is sitting on a trucker's lap while she is smoking a cigarette. You follow along as both of the main characters struggle through life. Quinn trying to make it big as a photographer, trying to find a lasting relationship and friends' addictions along the way. And LuLu who has a mother who is working the oldest profession known to man and no real stability in the trailer park she grows up in. Along the way you will be drawn in to see if they both benefit from the one photograph and how both their life's change. This was a great read always to the end to see how it turns out and if their paths cross again. You will not be disappointed with this read.

[Susan Reinhardt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A breathtakingly beautiful novel about how one decision, a single photo taken on a whim, affects the lives of a talented young photographer and her subject: a poor, feisty, and often-neglected adolescent girl. Told from two points of view and spanning from the eighties to modern times, the novel is powerfully and masterfully written. Author Kerri Schlottman is a rare talent, a writer whose prose is lyrical and literary but carries a plot rich in emotion, leaving the reader thinking of the characters long after the last page is turned. A book club must-read.

[Carol Sente · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this short book for numerous reasons. This is a debut novel from a new author, it has a refreshingly different story line from my typical reads, the writing is good, the plot grabbed me from the first page, and the two female protagonists’ and their life journeys are hauntingly memorable. I ached for them. Their stories are sticking with me, like I want to know these women and comfort them.

The twist of life that connects Quinn and Lulu is a creative storyline. Quinn is a NY photographer passing through rural Pennsylvania with her boyfriend Billy who needs to pick up some drugs. Quinn eats at a truck stop diner with a trailer park across the street and, never without her camera, Quinn snaps some photos of 8 year old Lulu, one of her sitting on a trucker’s lap holding a lit cigarette. Quinn and Lulu have several short interactions over the course of 1/2 a day and then go their separate ways.

The story follows both women’s life journeys, their struggles and reconnection at the end of the story. The title seems a nod to Lulu’s question of Quinn…Tell me one thing….you saw me, you photographed me, but did you really see what the photo spelled out about my life, and why didn’t you ever come back to find me?

The story is set in a time during the AIDS crisis and opioid explosion and how that played out differently in glittering New York and rural Pennsylvania.

[Susan (The Book Bag) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two people, two tough living situations, and the one thing that bonds the two of them together. Tell Me One Thing explores the lives of struggling artist Quinn and nine year old Lulu, who connected one afternoon when Quinn asked to take Lulu's picture. As the story progresses, we witness the hard lives they both endured. Told in alternating voices, we are privy to the downhill spirals they both seem to be on.

Tell Me One Thing drew me into the worlds of these two people and captivated me as I witnessed their struggles and their growth. This is a beautifully written story that will stick with me for a long time. This is Kerri Schlottman's debut novel and I'm excited to see what she writes next.

[Translator Monkey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written, tragically presented, as we follow the lives of Quinn the photographer and Lulu the terribly neglected and exploited preteen, we see two paths that are very much alike but traveling in different directions. At times this verges on the brink of trauma porn, but pushing through it (and sharing the ups and downs of these two young women) is ultimately rewarding, each in its own way. Not an easy read for most, I would think.

[Nicole McCann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book ripped my heart out. It's devastating, and beautifully written. Like in other books by Schlottman I've read (Sweetheart Deals and The Song Remains the Same), her characters destroy you in the best way possible.

[Scott Semegran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tell Me One Thing by Kerri Schlottman is a novel of literary fiction. The book description from the publisher describes it best: “Outside a rural Pennsylvania motel, nine-year-old Lulu smokes a cigarette while sitting on the lap of a trucker. Recent art grad Quinn is passing through town and captures it. The photograph, later titled "Lulu & the Trucker," launches Quinn's career, escalating her from a starving artist to a renowned photographer. In a parallel life, Lulu fights to survive a volatile home, growing up too quickly in an environment wrought with drug abuse and her mother's prostitution. Decades later, when Quinn has a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of Art and "Lulu & the Trucker" has sold at auction for a record-breaking amount, Lulu is surprised to find the troubling image of her young self in the newspaper. She attends an artist talk for the exhibition with one question in mind for Quinn: Why didn't you help me all those years ago? Tell Me One Thing is a portrait of two Americas, examining power, privilege, and the sacrifices one is willing to make to succeed. Traveling through the 1980s to present day, it delves into New York City's free-for-all grittiness while exposing a neglected slice of the struggling rust belt.”

Quinn Bradford eventually becomes successful as a photographer, but she can’t seem to shake the knowledge that maybe she could have helped Lulu instead of photographing her. As Lulu grows into an adult, she often wonders herself why Quinn didn’t do something to help her. This novel explores both women’s lives that splinter from the moment Quinn snaps the Polaroid of 10-year old Lulu sitting uncomfortably on a trucker’s lap while she holds a cigarette, his grubby hands wrapped around her waist. Both women struggle in their own way: Lulu within the drug-addled community of her childhood and Quinn living the life of a poor artist who many take advantage of. They both live long lives filled with loss and love, but only Quinn rises above poverty to become famous.

Schlottman deploys a dual timeline for both women and their lives are depicted with pathos and levity, the grim nature of poverty revealed as well as the joy of finding souls who bond through love and suffering. Once the photo of “Lulu and the Trucker” is taken and both of their lives are revealed separately, this one question remains: how will their two timelines come back together? There is an obvious way that they could merge, but Schlottman wisely avoids this tactic. The ending seems to me to be well-earned and true, a fitting end to a fantastic novel. Keep an eye out for Kerri Schlottman. She has a great literary career ahead of her.

I really enjoyed this novel and I highly recommend it. I would give this book 5 stars.

[Candi Sary · Rating 5 out of 5]

“…she loves performance, the way a body can tell a story, each muscle and movement like a string of adjectives and metaphors.”

I read the second half of this beautifully written book in one day. I had to know what was going to happen! The novel alternates between the stories of Quinn, a starving artist who becomes a renowned photographer, and Lulu, a young girl, trying to survive a brutal life with a prostitute/drug addict mother. Quinn and Lulu cross paths just one day—and a Polaroid picture that Quinn takes of the young girl smoking a cigarette while sitting on a trucker’s lap launches her career. Decades later, Lulu comes across the now famous picture and shows up to Quinn’s art exhibition hoping to ask the artist why she didn’t help her all those years ago. It’s a fascinating look at the two parallel lives. Having just read Demon Copperhead, I was heartbroken yet again for Lulu, who, like Demon, suffers the consequences of being on the wrong side of power and privilege in this country. And Quinn’s story of trying to make it in New York’s art world in the 80s is equally compelling, with the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic and drug addiction soaring. There is so much packed into this short novel! Schlottman does an amazing job making these complex characters feel so real as we follow them through their lives. I just can’t stop thinking about them.

[Tim Cummings · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tell Me One Thing by Kerri Schlottman is a visual, visceral deep dive into the heart of art and commerce, of dreams and desire, of two unlikely lives melding in the instant click of a photograph being snapped. The author is wielding many superpowers here--her narrator is as astute as a camera lens, deftly homing in on all the details and nuance the naked eye oversees--but her most powerful is the sense of intimacy with which she vivisects two female lives whose destinies are interwoven for decades though they only meet for an accidental instant.

Quinn Bradford is a fledgling photographer making her way through the grit and glitter of a Warhol-saturated NYC in the early 1980s, replete with drugs and dreams and AIDS and art. Lulu is a little girl lost in the dust and mire of a Pennsylvania trailer park, impoverished, ignored, and inured to a life of relying on the desperation of truckers and tramps as a way to attempt to survive.

Powerful, poetic, and important, this book asks resounding questions about the people we expect to save us, specters who appear like flashbulbs popping in the darkest night only to disappear again, remaining merely in the echo chambers of our hearts. An emotionally walloping book, beautifully wrought.

[John Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book. It weaves two stories together into an examination of art, worth, and responsibility. The characters are full-blooded and completely relatable. I hope everyone will take the opportunity to experience this deep dive into murky depths of artistic and moral challenges.

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story opens with recent art grad Quinn, waiting for her boyfriend to run an errand. They are in an impoverished town in Pennsylvania and Quinn, with her camera always at the ready, meets Lulu a nine year old hanging outside a motel waiting for her mother. The motel is near a truck stop and the trailer park Lulu lives in. Before Quinn leaves town, she take a deeply disturbing photo of Lulu sitting on a truckers lap smoking a cigarette. This is the photo that launches Quinn's career and makes her a renowned photographer. Quinn struggles for many years but rises out of poverty and the self destructive people in her life. But not Lulu. Her life is a perpetual fight for survival.

This is a painful, deep dive into the life of two Americas. Although Quinn experiences poverty, loss, immersion into the drug and AIDS stricken world of New York City in the 1980s, you know from the beginning that she moves out of this world. But Lulu's fight for survival continues on. When Lulu sees her photo in a newspaper to promote Quinn's retrospective and finds out that it sold for millions of dollars and she wants to know why Quinn didn't help her all those years ago?

Indeeed. Why not?

In some ways, reading this book was like rubber necking an accident. You want to look away but you can't. You want things to be different for all the Lulus of the world.

This is a thoughtful, well crafted debut novel leaving us much to think about.

[Papyrus Shelf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unexpected, feverish, jarring and emotively charged. This book hits you with a wave of emotions, questions, biases and everything in between. It depicts social criticism in a way that makes you wonder your place and time in this world and the accountability of your own actions. This book is raw, dingy and obscure while pushing the boundaries of comfort and sanity. There are demons as there are redemptions. Sure, the themes of this book are serious, but its point is to show you the rawness of human life in all its decadent lows and glorious highs. Normally I am not a big fan of open endings, but the ambiance of this book was so well written I can pass through that. Pick this book, wherever you can find it, but read it, you will love Quinn and Lulu's stories.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quinn is a young woman on the cusp of adulthood and making a name for herself and trying to put her art degree to good use. She’s never without her cameras and constantly taking pictures wherever she goes. Her best friend, Billy, is a drug dealer and on one of his deliveries, she tags along. While staying in a cheap motel set in the middle of a poverty stricken neighborhood outside of Philly, Quinn meets a little 9 year old girl named Lulu. Lulu is hanging out at the motel because her mom “cleans” it and does things for money that no 9 year old should know about.

It’s there that she takes a candid picture of Lulu on a Trucker’s lap and the photo is later labeled, “Lulu and the Trucker.” Little did Quinn know what goes on in the back parts of America, where no one cares how things are run and money is hard to come by honestly, that life for a 9 year old girl is hard. Back in her real world Quinn struggles with bills and finding a name for herself while struggling with friends with AIDS, her best friend who is a drug addict. These two lives run parallel to each other while neither woman forgets the other. Lulu wondering why Quinn never did anything to help her and Lulu never realizing that money doesn’t always bring you happiness. Both women find that the struggle in life is real, no matter where you are.

[Marina Santicola · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was actually a really cool book. Loved the dual time lines and character perspectives. Eye opening and thoughtful.

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

There were parts of this book I could relate to almost too much. Breathtaking.

[Iryna Yemialyanava · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this story that highlights those who usually stay deep in the background. But Kerri Schlottman doesn’t stop there. Her compassion and sensitivity extends to both ends of the spectrum, creating very human and touching characters, with every subtlety and undertone. As a result, her characters are complex and lifelike, they jump right off the page and into your heart.

[Randy Esquire · Rating 5 out of 5]

I rarely read fiction because I’m often disappointed but THIS was fantastic. I found a new favorite author.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreaking stories but beautiful writing. I can’t stop thinking about it…

[Alissa Roath · Rating 5 out of 5]

This books contained the most beautiful character development, the kind of characters you think about long after you have finished reading. I was not expecting how much I would wrestle with the subjects of some of our most famous photography in modern history, and the responsibility the artist has to them, if any. Beautifully written.

[Mary Ference · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very emotion and tough read but really good. Glad I read it.

[Michelle Kicherer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tell Me One Thing was one of those books that got me from the start, and that I randomly think about all the time. I am already antsy to read Schlottman's next novel!

[Shellie Danneels · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was written by Denny’s cousin Kerri. It was a really good book. You can find it on Amazon for Kindle or physical book. I definitely recommend it and all the other books she has written.

[Bella Lentini · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazing book!! Quick read but discussed so many important things. 4 stars because I thought the author would focus more on the interaction between the two main characters later in their life but this was like the last chapter only. But still so good

[Phyllis bookishinnj · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based in NYC in the 1980's, Quinn is a struggling artist, trying to get her photography noticed. Lulu is a 10 year old girl, living in rural PA in a trailer park, trying to understand her life and the life of the adults around her. By chance, the two meet and Quinn engages Lulu by asking for a tour of her neighborhood and if she can take some photos of her. On her way out of town, Quinn passes a motel and sees Lulu outside, sitting on the lap of a trucker, his hand wrapped around her waist, and she's smoking a cigarette. Quinn quickly snaps a polaroid as the car is moving. As time passes, Quinn becomes more and more ashamed of this photo, yet at the same time it is a piece of her, and anyone who sees it is in awe of it and the story it tells.

Told from multiple POV's the story spans 30 years and the reader watches the lives of Quinn and Lulu unfold. These two characters endure so many struggles, but Lulu's story is the most gut wrenching of the two. They both think about each other through the years and as Lulu ages, she wonders why Quinn never came back to help her. Although tough to get through at times, this story is full of raw emotion and the reader can't help but think about consequences and how they shape not only us, but those we cross paths with every day.