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November 21, 2011
Davy’s melodramatic debut traces the rise and fall of Aurelia, an Iowa farm where the Hathaway family enjoyed financial prosperity and suffered personal ruin. Meredith Pincetti, née Hathaway, returns to Aurelia long after it’s gone fallow (to exorcise her family’s ghosts) and recounts the legacy of her spiteful grandmother Lavinia, who engineered the farm’s spectacular ascension and the family’s explosive disunion. “Rotten seeds make diseased trees,” Lavinia once said, describing a fate she set in motion with her scandalous marriage to Cal Senior. Lavinia pledges her loyalty to Aurelia by ritually spilling her blood on its soil, and has her children and grandchildren do the same, yet her cold-blooded mind games lead them to desecrate the land with stunning acts of malice, depravity, and destruction. Rage drives Cal Senior, his son, and his grandson to drunken violence, while Lavinia, her stepdaughter, and her granddaughters channel their anger into emotional treachery. Despite the novel’s clumsy expositions, Davy’s characters are lively and engaging. However, given that the Hathaway men’s brutality is pardoned, while the women’s emotional transgressions can’t be forgiven, the novel’s moral universe proves troubling. Agent: Davey Literary & Media.