STORYWORLD

With International Women's day falling on March 8th, I'm featuring notable books I've read recently, written by women and focusing on women's issues, while fearlessly pushing the boundaries of fiction. ON THE SAVAGE SIDE by Tiffany McDaniel This was an incredibly brutal yet beautiful novel. Not for the faint of heart, it tackles addiction, parental neglect, child abuse, child sexual abuse, prostitution, police brutality, male brutality and the never-ending cycle of poverty and addiction,, and it achieves all this without being gratuitous, sentimental or judgmental. McDaniel gives humanity to the women struggling with the savagery of life in a dying Ohio town. The novel was inspired by the unsolved murders of The Chillicothe Six; six women--mothers, daughters, sisters--who went missing. When the first is found floating dead in the river, and more bodies follow, some disturbing truths about the people in this small Ohio town are revealed. This harrowing and hauntin...