September 1, 2022
Twin sisters Arcade and Daffodil are venturesome girls, seeing the dust of stampeding horses in the local papermill's smoke and a time machine in a rusty 1950s convertible. But their lives are crushed close when women and girls from their town go missing and the killer seems to be circling around them. Echoing the tragic deaths of the Chillicothe Six in 2014-15 Ohio; following the best-selling, multiple-best booked Betty.
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Starred review from December 19, 2022
McDaniel’s stunning latest (after Betty) draws on a string of real-life unsolved murders and disappearances in Chillicothe, Ohio. The economically depressed town reeks of funk from the paper mill and an equally pungent stench of despair. Twin sisters Arcade and Daffy retreat into their fierce imaginations while growing up in the 1980s, despite their parents being addicted to heroin. Their resilience persists even after their father dies from an overdose: Daffy shows promise as a swimmer and poet, Arcade as an amateur archaeologist. By the time the two become teens, they too succumb to heroin addiction and turn to sex work to support their habit. They form fervent friendships with a group of other young women, calling themselves the “Chillicothe Queens,” though their “crowns” are the blissful highs of heroin. After a woman turns up dead in the river, followed by others including some of the twins’ friends, Arcade grows increasingly desperate to save them from a similar fate. McDaniel portrays the twins and the others in their group as almost preternaturally bright, full of knowledge and wonder, making for an aching contrast to their traumas of addiction, abuse, violence, and loss. It’s a striking portrayal of women fighting for their lives, and one readers won’t soon forget.
December 15, 2022
More Midwestern gothic from the author of Betty (2020). This story begins in 1979 in Chillicothe, Ohio, an industrial town on the decline. The story's narrator is Arcade "Arc" Doggs, who's looking back at a time when she was 6 years old. She has a twin sister called Daffy--or Daffodil Poet because she likes to rhyme. They live with their mother, Adelyn, and their Aunt Clover. Both women are heroin addicts and sex workers. When the twins' grandmother Mamaw Milkweed dies, the girls are left to fend for themselves, and they find community with other lost girls. This novel is inspired by the six women who disappeared from the area around Chillicothe between May and December 2015. But McDaniel moves her narrative back in time, and no one should mistake this novel for a mystery or thriller. This is, instead, an exploration of addiction and grief and an indictment of how we decide who deserves saving. As she did in Betty, McDaniel gives every character the voice of a poet. Everyone--everyone--in this novel speaks like a bard, an oracle, or both. It's impossible to say much about this novel's ending without spoiling it, but it's safe to say that it will be confounding--if not frustrating--for many readers. McDaniel has attempted a lot here--maybe too much.
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Starred review from January 1, 2023
McDaniel's latest, a story about strong women and their ability to endure, even in the face of poverty and male domination, has roots in the author's Cherokee heritage. The story focuses on twins Arc and Daffy, who were left with their beloved grandmother as babies but reclaimed by their parents when they were still small. After their father died, they lived with their mom and aunt; both were sex workers and addicted to drugs. At age 10, the girls were raped by one of their mom's "johns." To combat the ugliness, violence, and desperation of their lives, they concoct an imaginary life full of fanciful creatures and ideas, most of which are built around strong, ancient woman and spirit animals from their grandmother's stories. But nothing, it seems, can help the girls escape the shackles of rural poverty, prostitution, addiction, shattered hopes, and broken dreams. In this richly imaginative story, McDaniel takes the reader on a journey that is both painful and violent, but it shows the power of the human imagination to survive and offers a testament to women who, despite their strength, died in darkness. While this haunting and spellbinding tale is definitely not an easy read, it is thought--provoking, deeply moving, and rich with meaning.
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Starred review from February 1, 2023
Set in a hollowed-out Rust-Belt city, McDaniel's latest (after the award-winning Betty) is inspired by the story of the Chillicothe Six, a group of women linked by drugs and prostitution who were murdered in 2014-15 in Chillicothe, OH--a case that's still unsolved. Recast here to the 1980s--90s, the narrative focuses on a group of young women who call themselves the Chillicothe Queens, notably twin sisters Arc and Daffy. Intelligent and imaginative, their dreams are too soon derailed by poverty and drug use--both their parents' and their own; by their teen years, they are turning tricks to pay for their habit, along with the rest of the Chillicothe Queens. One by one, the young women disappear, their bodies eventually turning up in the river. They've been murdered by an unknown figure they call the River Man, who is symbolic of all the predatory men in their lives. VERDICT Narrated by the deceased Arc, McDaniel's novel is by turns stark and poetic, a bleak and solemn elegy to lives that in another place and time might have been lived on the beautiful side. It's also a tale of a nation unraveling, drowning in rivers of hopelessness and drug addiction.--Lawrence Rungren
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