First published 2020
Mary Rose Whitehead finds fourteen-year-old Gloria Ramírez collapsed on her ranch house porch in the early morning hours after Valentine's Day 1976. The teenager has been savagely attacked in a nearby oil field outside Odessa, Texas. As the oil boom transforms the town, bringing prosperity and violence in equal measure, the assault divides the community along lines of race and class. Churches and barrooms debate the case before it reaches any courtroom. Mary Rose and other women in Odessa know intimately the brutality that accompanies the town's economic transformation, while the men celebrate the coming wealth. When the legal system fails to deliver justice, tensions escalate toward a dangerous confrontation. The women of this small Texas town must navigate their own vulnerability and find strength in each other as they confront the violence that threatens to consume their community.
Genres: fiction, american-fiction, 20th-century, crime, contemporary, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: community, social-justice
Setting: Odessa, Texas
Period: 1976
320 pages · Hardcover · Harper
Content warnings: abuse, violence