August 2020 First Editions Club Pick

"Betty's voice is so genuine and compelling, you can't help but be pulled through the foothills of the Appalachian mountains with her. You feel all of the pain she is feeling, you want what she wants and you become so wrapped up in the mythical stories of her Cherokee father that you begin to forget the harsh realities of Betty's world. This is a novel that shows the depths of love, imagination and family. Tiffany McDaniel has written such a beautifully captivating novel. Her lush prose carry the reader from page to page in such a graceful way, it's truly mesmerizing."- Hillary Taylor, Lemuria bookseller

New York, NY: Knopf (August 18, 2020)

First Edition. Signed on bookplate.

Near fine in dust jacket.

A stunning, lyrical novel set in the rolling foothills of the Appalachians in which a young girl discovers stark truths that will haunt her for the rest of her life.

“A girl comes of age against the knife.”

So begins the story of Betty Carpenter. Born in a bathtub in 1954 to a Cherokee father and white mother, Betty is the sixth of eight siblings. The world they inhabit is one of poverty and violence—both from outside the family, and also, devastatingly, from within. The lush landscape, rich with birdsong, wild fruit, and blazing stars, becomes a kind of refuge for Betty, but when her family’s darkest secrets are brought to light, she has no choice but to reckon with the brutal history hiding in the hills, as well as the heart-wrenching cruelties and incredible characters she encounters in her rural town of Breathed, Ohio.

But despite the hardship she faces, Betty is resilient. Her curiosity about the natural world, her fierce love for her sisters, and her father’s brilliant stories are kindling for the fire of her own imagination, and in the face of all she bears witness to, Betty discovers an escape: she begins to write. She recounts the horrors of her family’s past and present with pen and paper and buries them deep in the dirt—moments that have stung her so deeply, she could not tell them, until now.

Inspired by generations of her family and dedicated to her mother, Tiffany McDaniel sets out to free the past by telling this heartbreaking yet magical story—a remarkable novel that establishes her as one of the freshest and most important voices in American fiction.

TIFFANY MCDANIEL is an Ohio native whose writing is inspired by the rolling hills and buckeye woods of the land she knows. She is also a poet and a visual artist. Her debut novel was The Summer That Melted Everything.