Tag: Domestic Violence

Posted on

Precious Ugly — Domestic Violence Awareness Month

“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.

Get 15% off at Bookshop.org with code CLINE.

@raeclineauthor · #PreciousUgly

Posted on

Where Moral Authority Begins | Part V: The Unbearable Virtue of Superbelt

I was nine or ten when the lashings turned end of day ritual. Before each lashing I was to undress from the waist down—pants and panties—and bend over the edge of the bed they shared, my mother and stepfather whom I called Daddy. She was never in the room, my mother, always somewhere else in the house, doing something. I imagine her, now, drinking a cup of coffee or a glass of pinot grigio or folding laundry or cleaning the kitchen because that was what she often did, clean the kitchen. She liked a tidy home and was good at keeping a tidy home. We left our outside shoes at the door.

I could hear the slide of the belt behind me each time as he pulled it from his slacks. I still have one hanging in my closet, a belt, not the slacks. I don’t remember being whipped with that belt, in particular, but it became a talisman of sorts. It had personality, like an aging college hippie in bell bottoms and loose cotton shirt, the belt low on the hip, swaggering, holding it all together. It is brown leather and wide with a big metal buckle. I wore it nearly every day in grad school at Johns Hopkins then American University. I secretly called it Superbelt, my symbol, my token, my power stolen from his waning youth, reappropriated for my cause.

The Ritual

Daddy’s preferred belt was finer, smooth leather, meant for business. It was not luxurious. It was middle class appropriate. Brown or black, usually, whichever belt he’d chosen to hold up his slacks that morning, which is to say that it was always the belt he wore, never a belt from the closet. I sometimes wondered if he chose the belt in the morning with this in mind, feeding the belt through the loops of his slacks, visualizing ripping it out that evening upon returning home, an effective routine after a hard day’s work like a fresh cocktail waiting in my mother’s hand, a kiss on the cheek. I was the kiss. The belt was his unbearable virtue….

Read the full essay at Eckleburg: “Where Moral Authority Begins | Part V: The Unbearable Virtue of Superbelt“

Posted on

Precious Ugly Playlist at Largehearted Boy

For Largehearted Boy’s Book Notes series, I created and discussed the music playlist behind Precious Ugly.

“In Precious Ugly I needed to build a music bubble around my character, Clementine—thirteen, pregnant and living in a conversion van on a campsite with her mother and father, an abusive alcoholic who fancies himself a miracle worker, a cult leader.”

 

“Rae Cline’s novel Precious Ugly may be the year’s most powerful debut…” — Largehearted Boy

 

In the Book Notes series, previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others.

So much gratitude to Largehearted Boy. Read the essay and listen to the playlist.

Posted on

Rae Cline Celebrates Precious Ugly Book Launch in New York City

Celebrating the release of Precious Ugly at The William in New York City. Photos and highlights from the novel’s NYC book launch.

 

“May be the year’s most powerful debut.” — Largehearted Boy

 

There are quite a few people I want to thank for bringing Precious Ugly into the world.

The Precious Ugly Team

7.13 Books, and my editors including John Madera (editor in chief, Big Other), and Mysia Haight.

I also want to thank Emi Battaglia, Michael Asen and Charlotte Holster and Susie Stangland.

New York Attendance

A special thank-you to Cindy Kanusher, Executive Director of the Pace Women’s Justice Center and Melissa Jeltsen, journalist and host of What Happened To for joining me in conversation tonight and to Caitlin Bea, and Miracle Jones (editor in chief, Ristretto Books) for their support.

 

And last, but certainly not least, my family, in particular, my partner, Rand—my love, my best friend, and my extraordinarily patient first reader—who is also a fierce party planner.

Precious Ugly is available now at your local bookseller and online.