Category: Precious Ugly

“Precious Ugly may be the year’s most powerful debut, a book that examines domestic violence and generational trauma with a rare empathy that bonds the reader with the protagonist.“

—Largehearted Boy, Book Notes

Precious Ugly is a searing debut novel for readers of Bastard Out of Carolina and Demon Copperhead. Set in the Reagan era, this work of Appalachian literary fiction asks what a girl hopes, inherits and survives.

Clementine is thirteen years old and living in a van with her father, a preacher and cult leader, on a campsite in Harpers Ferry. She must decide if the miracle he promises will save her or destroy her.

“It was an image that stuck with the girl, the woman standing in the middle of the road and staring at the driver and daring him to do something. And as the girl grew older she held to this image, held it close, wanting desperately to do the same, to stand in the road and stare him down, stare him down, but she was just a girl, his girl. She would always be his girl and what was in a stare anyway?”

It is 1985. The country clings to faith under the threat of nuclear war, economic recession, and an AIDS crisis about which no one wants to speak. Clementine must rely on herself and strangers to survive the addictions and sins of her family and discover for herself what it means to be safe. What it means to be seen.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Precious Ugly follows thirteen-year-old Clementine, living in a van with her father — a preacher and cult leader — on a campsite in Harpers Ferry, deciding whether the miracle he promises will save her or destroy her. It’s a story about what a girl hopes, inherits, and survives.

“This is not an easy book, nor should it be. It is a story that needs to be told — it needs to be read.” ★★★★★

— Teresa Brock, Fully Booked in Kentucky (Amazon)

Available wherever books are sold.

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