What we are Reading

Salt Bones

Jennifer Givhan. Little, Brown, $29 (384p) ISBN 978-0-316-58152-3

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Givhan (River Woman, River Demon) mesmerizes with this masterful retelling of the story of Persephone and Demeter, set on the California-Mexico border. Malamar “Mal” Veracruz has lived in the dying town of El Valle, near the edge of the Salton Sea, for her entire life. Neither she nor her neglectful, emotionally abusive mother have ever left. After Mal’s sister went missing as a teenager, Mal stepped up to raise her baby brother before having two children of her own. Ever since, she’s been haunted by her mother’s contempt, by a fierce determination to protect her own daughters, and recently, by visions of a horse-headed spirit woman from local legend, which convinces her that her family is in imminent danger. When another girl goes missing from El Valle, Mal and her daughters embark on an arduous journey to find her­—and perhaps confront the long-ago fate of Mal’s sister. Givhan thoroughly evokes the harsh beauty of her setting, weaving folklore, mystery, and horror into a breathtaking tapestry. It’s a stunning examination of generational trauma.

Agent: Rebecca Friedman, Rebecca Friedman Literary.

Release: July 2025

Protection Spell

Jennifer Givhan. Univ. of Arkansas, $17.95 trade paper (102p) ISBN 978-1-68226-028-9

In a second collection that beats with multiple hearts, Givhan (Landscape with Headless Mama) addresses complicated familial identity, writing of her own Mexican-American background, her mixed-race husband, and their adopted black child. The book is full of anxiety over the vulnerability of children, specifically her own child’s identity and how she can protect him. Givhan writes of the initial apprehension, “after the gauge of my uterus/ had fixed itself on empty.// I’d made peace with the threat of/ you’re not my ‘real’ mother.” She also confronts the racism embedded in the adoption process: how the “white ones cost ten grand more.” Throughout, Givhan exposes the enduring animosity and aggression towards biracial families, doing so with candor and sparkling language. Every line is tightly composed, and the sensory details pull the reader towards the poet as she recounts her splintered world—her past as well as the present world she creates and navigates as a woman and a mother of color. Chronicling the cruelty that children endure at the hands of adults, Givhan casts the eponymous spell for her son and her family. Givhan asks readers to witness racial inequity beside her and imagine a better future—how, we, too, have the power to cast a spell so that every human feels secure, safe, protected.

Release Date: February 2017

Black Cohosh

Eagle Valiant Brosi. Drawn & Quarterly, $24.95 trade paper (360p)

ISBN 978-1-77046-777-4

In Brosi’s unsparing yet mirthful debut, a teenager with a speech impediment navigates the peculiar indignities of commune life and public school. Eagle is teased at school for his unusual name, his long ponytail, and especially his acute speech impediment (represented in speech bubbles as gnarled, indecipherable runes). Teachers regard him with open hostility, and a beating at the hands of two classmates triggers a seizure that lands him in the hospital. Home offers little refuge. His family resides in a hippie commune that zealously polices its back-to-the-land ethos. His mother’s contentious use of bone meal in the vegetable garden precipitates a “consensus meeting” where scandal erupts over the discovery of a fast-food wrapper. While his bushy-bearded father obsesses over the young women at the college where he teaches, Eagle’s softhearted mother imparts wisdom through lessons on native plants but sometimes lapses into unwieldy metaphors (“When you grow up, you might become attracted to some hot young green bean. But it won’t take care of you like a bug, ugly bean will”). Over a loosely structured narrative, Brosi’s sparse, knobbly pen-and-ink illustrations, which recall 1970s pamphlets and Shel Silverstein, mine blunt humor from the self-absorbed adults surrounding Eagle. Brosi’s thorny coming-of-age story hoes a tough row between tragedy and comedy, to disarming effect. It feels like a discovery that comics fans will be talking about for years to come.

Release Date: June 16, 2025

Eleven Percent

Maren Uthaug, trans. from the Danish by Caroline Waight. St. Martin’s, $29 (304p) ISBN 978-1-250-32964-6

Uthaug, who is of Norwegian, Sami, and Danish descent, makes her English-language debut with a provocative dystopian tale of a world dominated by women, where biological males are kept sedated in spa centers and allowed to exist only for the purpose of procreation and women’s pleasure. The novel alternates among the viewpoints of four women. There’s Medea, a witch living in a small convent who keeps venomous snakes for elixirs and is secretly raising a male child she took in as an infant. Her lover, Christian priestess Wicca, uses Medea’s snakes in salvation rituals. Silence, a member of Medea’s convent, atones for her long-ago betrayal of a friend, while Eva, who works at one of the spa centers, harbors her own secret. After Medea’s boy, now seven, flees from the convent, the four women search for him, and Uthaug reveals the surprising connections between them. The speculative elements are peppered with bizarre and lurid details, such as an underclass of sex-worker “manladies” who sew toy penises onto their bodies, but readers will be immersed in this world by the time the satisfying conclusion rolls around. It’s an intriguing thought experiment about the consequences of gender oppression.

Release Date: April 22, 2025