House of Cotton

Listen and listen good! An incredible debut author has hit the scene, and she can write southern gothic like nobody’s business. Magnolia, 19 years old and just orphaned for the last time by her grandmother, Mama Brown, who raised her after her mother got hooked on drugs and abandoned her years before, is looking at a future of the bleakest kind until a sharply dressed man named Cotton walks into the gas station where she works and asks her if she has ever considered modeling. I know, I know but hold tight, this is not what you are thinking. . . Cotton works at a funeral home with his Aunt Eden, and here is where the GOTHIC meets the SOUTHERN. Magnolia is simultaneously trying to fill a hole inside her, left by men taking advantage every which way, and here she might finally have a shot at independence, but the deal on the table is strange and getting stranger. This book is a shock to the system, with its bizarre dance around grief, death, survival, and sex, and takes a deep look at what it means to be a poor black woman in the American South. You would be remiss to miss this incredible book, reminiscent of Jesymn Ward with some proper Tennessee Williams Gothic weaves in.