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About
For readers of Samatha Hunt and Mona Awad, a literary thriller that subverts the missing woman plot, following a white housewife's misguided investigation into the disappearance of her Indigenous neighbor.
In the mowed down industrial north of Prince George, "white trash" housewife Jenny Hayes shares a fence with the only First Nations woman in the cul-de-Sac. To Jenny, in her sheltered and dull life, it's not fair that Rachelle, whose yard is trash-pocked and overgrown with fireweed, should have what Jenny wants most in the world, and doesn't. All too eagerly volunteering herself to babysit, brush hair, and fold laundry, Jenny tries to shutter judgments about the way her neighbor-no, her friend-lives, with stilettos tucked under the bed and the house in disarray.
When at once Beth Tremblay-Prince George's "first" missing girl-and Rachelle are disappeared along Highway 16, only Beth's name is plastered on billboards and broadcasted over the air. Rachelle's daughters carted off by the state, Jenny answers an unwarranted call to investigate. After all, Jenny thinks, who else is looking?
Fireweed disrupts the question of what we take from a character who isn't bad, but who does no good. Who does not know enough to ask: who are these white crosses for? Why are these women marching? And instead joins them, in an attempt to parade. With a reveal that is intentionally true to our constant mythologizing of marginalized communities, Haddad guides readers into their own discomfort-acknowledging that while in stark settings all women are at risk of violence, there are structures that uphold danger in tiers. Lauren Haddad is an Iraqi-American from metro-Detroit who currently lives and works as an herbalist in a small village in Switzerland. Pursuing the question of why she would be drawn to a place of tragedy, Haddad followed the pull to Prince George's paradoxical wilderness and industry, expanding still-ongoing conversations with the indigenous community there into a grant-sponsored photo-journalism project, "Medicine Tree", which in collaboration with photographer Lucas Olivet received an honorable mention for Duke University's Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize. Haddad studied holistic nutrition in Vancouver, herbalism in Williams, Oregon and is a graduate with honors of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Her essay on Prince George will be featured in the forthcoming Skinnerboox publication Medicine Tree.
In the mowed down industrial north of Prince George, "white trash" housewife Jenny Hayes shares a fence with the only First Nations woman in the cul-de-Sac. To Jenny, in her sheltered and dull life, it's not fair that Rachelle, whose yard is trash-pocked and overgrown with fireweed, should have what Jenny wants most in the world, and doesn't. All too eagerly volunteering herself to babysit, brush hair, and fold laundry, Jenny tries to shutter judgments about the way her neighbor-no, her friend-lives, with stilettos tucked under the bed and the house in disarray.
When at once Beth Tremblay-Prince George's "first" missing girl-and Rachelle are disappeared along Highway 16, only Beth's name is plastered on billboards and broadcasted over the air. Rachelle's daughters carted off by the state, Jenny answers an unwarranted call to investigate. After all, Jenny thinks, who else is looking?
Fireweed disrupts the question of what we take from a character who isn't bad, but who does no good. Who does not know enough to ask: who are these white crosses for? Why are these women marching? And instead joins them, in an attempt to parade. With a reveal that is intentionally true to our constant mythologizing of marginalized communities, Haddad guides readers into their own discomfort-acknowledging that while in stark settings all women are at risk of violence, there are structures that uphold danger in tiers. Lauren Haddad is an Iraqi-American from metro-Detroit who currently lives and works as an herbalist in a small village in Switzerland. Pursuing the question of why she would be drawn to a place of tragedy, Haddad followed the pull to Prince George's paradoxical wilderness and industry, expanding still-ongoing conversations with the indigenous community there into a grant-sponsored photo-journalism project, "Medicine Tree", which in collaboration with photographer Lucas Olivet received an honorable mention for Duke University's Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize. Haddad studied holistic nutrition in Vancouver, herbalism in Williams, Oregon and is a graduate with honors of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Her essay on Prince George will be featured in the forthcoming Skinnerboox publication Medicine Tree.