Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls: A Memoir

'Audacious and instantly gripping . . . Whidbey is deeply satisfying' Catherine Chidgey, New York Times <BR>'There is, to put it simply, no book quite like Whidbey' Vogue<BR>'In the realm of Patricia Highsmith and Gone Girl' Chelsea Bieker<BR>'A masterpiece' Carmen Maria Machado<BR>----<BR>You want to know who did it, but that was never the question. Or, it was never the right one.<BR><BR>Birdie Chang doesn't know much about Whidbey Island, only that it is far. On the ferry, she has an unnerving encounter with a stranger, where she finds herself telling him everything: how she was sexually abused as a child, how the perpetrator now walks free, how the calls and emails from him haven't stopped and she is on the run; how she wants to kill him. The stranger poses a shocking question - if she agrees, he will murder the man who hurt her, with no strings attached. She gives him a name.<BR><BR>On the other side of the country, Mary-Beth receives a phone call from the police: her only son has been murdered. What follows is a complex story of three women connected through one man: Birdie, a woman on the run from her past and her abuser; Mary-Beth, the abuser's loving mother; and Linzie, a former reality star turned bestselling memoirist, and another victim of the same man.<BR><BR>Whidbey is a brilliant reimagining of the whodunnit - a searing, propulsive novel that asks who has real power over a story: the one who lives it, or the one who tells it?<BR><BR>Women are rarely in receipt of what they are owed.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER“Audacious and instantly gripping . . . hums with cinematic tension, echoing classic thrillers without tipping into pastiche. . . . In Madden’s vision, justice is partial at best and closure rare—and yet Whidbey is deeply satisfying." — Catherine Chidgey, New York Times Book Review"There is, to put it simply, no book quite like Whidbey." —Vogue A portrait of three women connected through one man in the aftermath of his murder—a stunning literary achievement and the explosive and highly anticipated debut novel from beloved award-winning memoirist T Kira Madden. Birdie Chang didn’t know anything about Whidbey Island when she chose it, only that it was about as far away as she could get from her own life. She’s a woman on the run, desperate for an escape from the headlines back home and the look of concern in her girlfriend’s eyes—and from Calvin Boyer, the man who abused her as a child and who’s now resurfaced. On her way, she has an unnerving encounter with a stranger on the ferry who offers her a proposition, a sinister solution and plan for revenge.But Birdie isn’t the only girl Calvin harmed back then. There’s also Linzie King, a former reality TV star who recently wrote all about it in her bestselling memoir. Though the two women have never met, their stories intertwine. Once Birdie arrives on Whidbey, she finally cracks the book’s spine, only to find too much she recognizes in its pages. Soon after, on the other side of the country, Calvin’s loving mother, Mary-Beth, receives a shocking phone call from the police: her only son has been murdered.Calvin’s death sets into motion a series of events that sends each woman on a desperate search for answers. A complex whodunit told from alternating points of view, Whidbey is searingly perceptive and astonishingly original. Exploring the long reach of violence and our flawed systems of incarceration and rehabilitation, this is a tense and provocative debut that’s sure to incite crucial questions about the pursuit of justice and who has real power over a story: the one who lives it, or the one who tells it?“Epic in its scope, intimate in its evocation, Whidbey reads like a thriller, compels like a mystery and regarding the human condition, converses with the classics. This is the book everyone will be talking about.” — Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning author of The Orphan Master’s Son and Fortune Smiles