BETTY by Tiffany McDaniel – Review

I received this book for free from the Author in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Betty by Tiffany McDaniel
Published by Knopf on August 18 2020
Genres: Adult, Literary fiction, historical, Coming of age
Pages: 446
Format: Finished hardcover
Source: Author
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The nitty gritty: Brutal and beautiful, heartbreaking and healing, Betty is an extraordinary coming-of-age story that I won’t soon forget.

Depending on which way the wind is blowing, the snow comes in. At first the flurries melt before they land. Then they pile lightly like dust, bringing their cold in. I can see my mother’s breath and the way her skin prickles. This is winter to me. My mother sitting in a spring dress in the middle of the parlor while the snow comes in. Dad running in and closing the windows in between wrapping a blanket around her. The snow left to melt into little puddles on the wooden floor of the house on Shady Lane in Breathed, Ohio. This is winter to me. This is marriage.

You might be wondering why I’m reviewing Betty, a novel firmly planted in literary fiction soil, with not a speculative element to be found. There are a couple of reasons. First, author Tiffany McDaniel reached out to me and asked me to read and review her book, and when I started doing some research, I found that several blogs I follow had already posted glowing reviews. And second, I was blown away by how many readers loved this book, and I knew I wanted to experience it for myself. Betty is not an easy book to read, but it’s also one of the most readable and mesmerizing books I’ve ever come across. Despite the terrible things that happen to the characters, I could barely put it down. McDaniel is a gifted storyteller and I’m shocked that this is only her second published novel. 

This sprawling family saga is told by Betty Carpenter, sixth child out of eight (although two died early), born in 1954 to a Cherokee father and a white mother. After traveling through various states during Betty’s early years, the family finally settles in Breathed, a small town in Southern Ohio. Betty grows up alongside her sisters Flossie and Fraya, and her brothers Leland, Trustin and Lint, and over the years experiences brutality and heartache, but also unconditional love, especially from her father Landon. Betty’s coming of age is fraught with racism, bullying and poverty, but her father’s gentle lessons about the natural world and his stories and myths about his Cherokee heritage add a magical sweetness to her days. Surrounded by a damaged and unstable mother and an older sister who is hiding a terrible secret, Betty nonetheless thrives and develops a fierce passion for writing, which helps her through the worst of her days.

Before I dive into this review, I need to mention a bunch of trigger warnings. Betty is a tough book to read at times, and if it weren’t for the heartwarming moments that balanced out the horror, I’m not sure I could have finished it. So—trigger warnings for racism, misogyny, rape, abuse (physical and mental), animal cruelty, corporal punishment, attempted suicide, murder, and depictions of extreme poverty. I know this sounds daunting, but please don’t let this stop you from reading this book. (Also, feel free to message me if you want more details on any of these trigger warnings.) McDaniel’s story is based on the life of her mother Betty and follows her from birth to the age of eighteen. Many of the anecdotes depicted come from the extensive interviews she did with various family members, and this authenticity gives her story an intensity that brings her characters to life.

Betty is a wonderful character with an uncanny strength and resilience despite everything she goes through. McDaniel gives her a vivid imagination and a connection to the earth, qualities that are shared by her siblings. But Betty suffers a lot in this story. When she’s nine, her mother tells her a terrible secret, and now Betty must carry those images with her for the rest of her life. She also witnesses a secret within her own family and must decide what to do with that information. I was shocked by the way poor Betty was treated, both as a person of color and as a female. She’s viciously bullied by one particular girl at school, and even the teachers and principals are horrible to her. But she stands up to them and never seems to lose her sense of self, and thanks to her father, she comes to understand her own value. 

There are so many sweet moments in this story, and I can’t mention all of them in this review, but several really stand out. Landon builds the girls a stage out back and they name it A Faraway Place. The stage acts as an anchor for the three sisters throughout the years, a place they can dream and tell each other stories, a safe place that shelters them from all the pain in their lives. Betty develops a habit of writing the stories of the people she loves and burying them in jars under the stage, as if to preserve them from being lost. The other moments I loved were when Betty, Flossie and Fraya wrote “good night” on strips of paper and gave them to each other. This childhood tradition continues on even when they are older and Fraya moves out of the house. I just loved this simple idea of saying “good night” in a note, it was so unexpected and sweet.

I loved the relationships among all the siblings, especially with the two younger boys, Lint and Trustin. Lint is a mentally unstable boy with a stutter who thinks animals are growing under his skin, and who has loved collecting rocks since he was old enough to pick one up. Despite his oddness, everyone in the family treats him kindly, and it just melted my heart! I also adored Trustin who is artistically gifted and spends his childhood drawing and painting. Because the family has barely any money, Landon makes paint brushes for Trustin out of whatever is handy in nature. Of course there are those times when violence erupts between Betty and Flossie, and to be honest, Flossie is often mean to Betty and makes fun of her skin color (Flossie got her mother’s pale skin, while Betty inherited her father’s dark skin), but these moments felt like normal squabbles between sisters.

And I have to mention Landon, because he is an extraordinary character. He’s such a nurturing figure in his children’s’ lives, the parent that holds everything together. He imparts stories of his Cherokee upbringing to his children and teaches them how to grow everything from vegetables to flowers, using planting as a metaphor for many life lessons.  In Cherokee legend, the women are always the strongest in the tribe, and Landon uses this idea to boost up his daughters and enforce their self worth.

As I mentioned before, there is a lot of heartache in this story, but most of it fits into the story, and even though I didn’t always enjoy those sections, they made sense for the lives these characters are living. There was only one chapter that didn’t feel quite right to me and honestly, it could have been left out and the story would have been just as powerful. I won’t give specific details, but I will say that it’s Flossie’s story and what happens to her when she turns sixteen. One particular event takes place near the end of the story, and coming so soon on the heels of several depressing scenes, I just couldn’t take any more. It almost felt as if it had been added for shock value, and even though Flossie wasn’t my favorite character, I certainly didn’t want her life to take such an awful turn.

Tiffany wrote Betty over fifteen years ago, and she says in an interview that she was only able to finally sell it because of the #MeToo movement. I can hardly imagine a world where this novel isn’t published, and I’m so grateful that I had the chance to read it. I applaud writers who are able to shine a light on the realities of sexual abuse, racism and other issues that women continue to be burdened with. I will always remember Betty and her fierce determination to be happy, despite what the world throws at her.

Huge thanks to Tiffany for providing a review copy.