Will I love Slewfoot?

Reading Slewfoot felt like being trapped in a suffocating room where every voice insists you are the problem.

It chillingly reminded me of awkward Sunday lunches with conservative relatives, those moments when you realize following the rules is a failing shield against a community built like a fortress. I felt a deep kinship with the desperation of trying to do everything right, only to be cast aside anyway.

What moved me most was the shift from endurance to a fierce, wild defiance because an alliance with the "monstrous" felt less like a descent and more like a homecoming. It reinforced… show more.

As if life in a Puritan colony isn’t horrifying enough, there’s a monster hanging around, ready to rip everyone to holy shreds for their sins. That’s Slewfoot in a nutshell, but there’s so much more than that. I loved the main character, a confident English woman who was sold into marriage to a Puritan colonial man by her father (gee, thanks, Dad). Big surprise—Puritan life isn’t all that great for her, especially due to her new husband’s smarmy brother, who wants what’s theirs.

I enjoyed this remarkable book, which I’d describe as part folktale, part historical fiction, and part monster-ghost-fest.… show more.