Betty by Tiffany McDaniel
Genre: Contemporary Fiction Setting: Appalachia Release: 2020
My father's hands were soil. My mother's were rain. No wonder they could not hold one another without causing enough mud for two. And yet out of that mud, they built us a house that became a home.
Based on the author's mother, Betty by Tiffany McDaniel is a searing and surprising novel about a child growing up to a white mother and a Cherokee father in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains.
A family started on a whim and in the throws of violence seems never able to shake it's cold, harsh beginnings but despite this, Betty's parents manage to find a home and raise a group of children together in an overwhelming series of challenges and tragedies. An ongoing theme through the novel is Betty's father, Landon, trying his best to provide as magical a childhood as possible - imbued with the soulfulness of his Cherokee traditions, rooted in a precious, symbiotic relationship with the Earth. Landon battles to protect his children in the face of hurdles which seem to merge into each other. Betty's mother is deeply scarred from her own horrific childhood and often slips into a quite brutal manner with her daughters. Added to this, Betty suffers racism on a daily basis as a result of her native heritage.
It is in its tragedies that the story becomes somewhat of a modern classic. McDaniel structures her plot in such a way that you never quite see the big hit coming, despite knowing it must inevitably arise. And there are some monstrous blows. Betty is forced to witness horrific rapes and accidents which punctuate a wonderful story with the harshest forms of reality.
Ultimately though, through Landon and through Betty's resilience, you cannot help but feeling some hope. In Britain, we would suggest he demonstrates a 'stiff upper lip'. However, it is more than this. Landon seems to absorb all of the terrible hurt and retain a kindness and love of nature, in order that he sets an example of choice to his children. The choice to give in or the choice to persevere. Betty is a unique novel that provides the most moving and addictive look at love, death and life.
Betty by Tiffany McDaniel