Betty is our narrator and she tells us her family’s story from 1909, her father’s birth to 1973, the year he died. Her parents were dirt poor and after a few years of moving around, they settled in an abandoned house lent by a friend in Breathed, Ohio. It was Leland’s hometown. They lived off the land, off the medicine Landon could concoct and off odd jobs. They were dirt-poor.

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 has stung her so deeply, she could not tell them, until now. Over time I also heard things like, “Tiffany, never publish under your name, your name is too fluffy, it’s too female.” I considered only using my initials, but then I’d be part of the problem, not part of the solution. I think we need to view women’s names as powerful! When The Summer That Melted Everything came out, people asked me why I was frowning in the author photo. That was about the fourth or fifth photo I had to take. In the first photo I wasn’t approachable enough; in another I was told I looked too young and wouldn’t be taken seriously, while another photo made me look too standoffish. There is still this way we’re viewing women: unless [women] look a certain way or talk a certain way or write a certain way, we won’t appeal to the audience as a whole. There’s a lot we have to do to make it an equal playing field. this book is sad. it is SAD. it is beautiful and broken and filled with tenderness and love and cruelty and neglect and it is SEARING. i cannot emphasize enough that, like life, it is a mixture of sad and lovely. although, also like life, for every sad you see coming, there’ll be two that’ll catch you off guard. Bettyis Betty Carpenter’s gripping coming of age story and is bold, inventive and profoundly moving.It is not a story blind to the character’s abuse, but also reveals the love, sweetness, and magic in her life.Betty is too brown, too female and too poor for the world, but her story reminds us that despite all obstacles there are those blessed times when we can still manage to find our voices and sing. A triumph!” I am going to try to get my hands on the authors debut novel, The Summer that Melted Everything, which was also set in the same town. I am officially obsessed with Tiffany McDaniel’s writing!!It was such a pleasure reading about him. Everything he taught his kids, his stories. I just- *sniffles* – love him so much.

Guernica: Betty takes place in Breathed, Ohio, the same setting as your first novel, Summer That Melted Everything . How did Breathed came to be? It’d be so much easier if the bad things in our lives were kept in our skin that we could shed off like a snake. Then we could leave all the dried horrid things on the ground and step forward, free from them. McDaniel has created something special here. Characters that evoked emotions, We have it all here. Coming-of-age, grief, trauma, abuse. We get to see how the world around these characters causes such pain, but unlike novels that focus on a small chunk of time, we get to see how these small ripples from a specific day, form into waves over a lifetime.

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Novelist Lynn Steger Strong on the revolutionary passivity of Rachel Cusk, Ottessa Moshfegh and Sally Rooney — how we’ve misread them and what comes next. I saw people compare it to A Little Life, the book I still haven't read, but it is well known for the sadness, so it makes sense.

A girl comes of age against the knife. She must learn to bear its blade. To be cut. To bleed. To scar over and still,

Betty by Tiffany McDaniel – Highly recommended

In different native tribes, the Three Sisters represent the three most important crops. Maize, beans, and squash. The crops grow together as sisters. The oldest is maize. She grows the tallest, supportin’ the vines of her younger sisters. The middle sister is beans. She gives nitrogen and nutrition to the soil, which allows her sisters to grow resilient and strong. The youngest is squash. She is the protector of her sisters. She stretches her leaves to shade the ground and fight off weeds. It is squash’s vines which tie the Three Sisters together in a bond that is the strongest of all. This was how I knew I’d have three daughters, even after Waconda died. Fraya’s the corn. Flossie is the beans. And you, Betty, are squash. You must protect your sisters as squash protects the corn and beans.” i enjoyed The Summer that Melted Everything a bunch, but Betty; a standalone with spillover into TSTME, has so much more weight. i remember bits and pieces from The Summer that Melted Everything—i remember the language being striking, i remember the framework and a few details in particular, but this one is going to stay in my brain for a lot longer, and there are specific scenes i know are with me for life; not as fond memories of a book i enjoyed, but as straight-up reader scars. When I took a step forward, the hands took it with me. I realized then that the whole time I thought I’d been walking alone, my father had been with me. Supportin’ me. Steadyin’ me. Protectin’ me, best he could. I knew I had to be strong enough to stand on my own two feet. I had to step out of my father’s hands and pull myself up out of the mud. I thought I would be scared to walk the rest of my life without him, but I know I’ll never really be without him because each step I take, I see his handprints in the footprints I leave behind.”