Nields explores outsider girlhood

Northampton musician Nerissa Nields has written a new young-adult novel with characters who are outsiders in pressure-packed teen society and who find themselves through music, Daniel Gewertz reports in the Herald. "``I was dorky until I was 13, and then I started playing guitar, and suddenly everybody loved me,'' the co-founder of '90s folkers the Nields says. Her book "Plastic Angel" (Orchard/Scholastic, $17.95) is about kids who have a hard time fitting in: "A part of me has never left that time in my life," Nields said. Last year Nields and her sister Katryna released "This Town Is Wrong," a CD that functions as a sort of soundtrack to the book. (A two-song disc comes with the volume.) Friday night at Passim, the duo will perform, connecting the disc and the book.  And Gewertz reports Nields already has an adult novel in the can, about a Massachusetts family rock band. (Tix are $15, $12 for passim members, and available here.)