Publishers Weekly
07/27/2020
In Burian’s darkly atmospheric adult debut (after the YA novel Welcome to the Slipstream), two foster siblings confront a supernatural power. Joanie, 19, returns to live with her abusive foster parents, Sil and Letta, and her five foster siblings in 1998 West Virginia after a brief marriage at 16 to Josiah, who died suddenly in mysterious circumstances. Joanie has given birth to a baby boy, never named in the text, and is desperate not to reveal his existence to Josiah’s mother, a powerful woman known as Mother Joseph, out of fear she will claim him. Mother Joseph holds the foster family—and much of the surrounding area—in thrall with a mysterious and intoxicating vine, which Joanie and her foster sisters are duty-bound to tend, in arcane rituals bound up in menstrual cycles. When the baby disappears, Joanie’s foster brother Cello vows to help find him, while pursuing his own dreams of escaping the family and going to college. Flashbacks to Joanie’s brief but unsettling tenure at Mother Joseph’s are interspersed with Joanie and Cello’s narratives, which become intertwined. Physical and psychological abuse, addiction, isolation, and abandonment all play out against a backdrop of overgrowth and decay as Burian makes the characters’ desperation and claustrophobia deeply palpable through vibrant prose. This is worth a look. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
"This is a powerful and exquisite novel, rooted in the mystical vine, which guides everything the characters do...magical realism at its finest." — Booklist, *Starred Review*
"Daughters of the Wild is a gorgeous, different, and completely engrossing book. Burian's writing is transporting - and exactly what I needed right now."
— Jessica Valenti, author of Sex Object: A Memoir
"With prose as luminous and transformative as the psychoactive plant at this novel’s core, this is a book about dignity, intuition, and the sustaining vine of friendship. A perennial read."— Courtney Maum, author of Costalegre
"Darkly atmospheric... Deeply palpable through vibrant prose." — Publishers Weekly
“Daughters of the Wild is that rare thing, a gorgeously written and richly imagined page-turner that plows full speed across your heart. Writers like Karen Russell, Joy Williams, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez spring to mind, but Natalka Burian’s voice is her own: lyrical, spunky, and defiantly untamed. It’s a voice we’ll be reading for a long time to come.”— Adam Wilson, author of Sensation Machines
“Natalka Burian’s Daughters of the Wild is a stunning portrait of a woman seeking to recover her stolen child and her own autonomy in the face of control and confinement. Saturated with magic and mysticism, this novel is a luminous and blisteringly real exploration of the bonds of motherhood, the limits and expansiveness of love, and the possibility of transcendence.”—Jessie Chaffee, author of Florence in Ecstasy
"Daughters of the Wild is a magical, gripping exploration of women’s power and the ties that bind. I was hooked by Joanie and Cello’s journeys to survive and grow and by Burian’s writing, which is as lush as the garden her characters give their all to. I won’t forget the complexity and the strength of these characters."— Danielle Lazarin, author of Back Talk
"Daughters of the Wild is a novel about history, our connection to the Earth, and above all, mother's intuition. This is an engrossing, startling debut and Joanie is a force of nature."
— Madeline Stevens, author of Devotion
"With utter believability Daughters of the Wild brings to life a whole kingdom of grimy, shamanist Virginia Gothic that exists just a short hitchhike away from our contemporary world. Keep your wits about you as you step across the border – but don't delay too long, because revolution is already stirring in Natalka Burian's spellbinding debut."
– Ned Beauman, author of Madness Is Better Than Defeat
