Betty: The International Bestseller

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I felt consumed by the ambitious enormity and sadness of this book. Betty is about the power of words and the language it is written in rings with this. I loved it, you will love it." Narrated by the deceased Arc, McDaniel’s novel is by turns stark and poetic, a bleak and solemn elegy to lives that in another place and time might have been lived on the beautiful side. It’s also a tale of a nation unraveling, drowning in rivers of hopelessness and drug addiction.”

Funny how the night makes everything so spooky,” she said as a gust of wind came and seemed to rattle the ground. Devastating…McDaniel treats the women who ‘walk the streets of Chillicothe with holes in their arms’ with great tenderness, far more tenderness than they receive in life… The young women, and the world in which they live, won’t easily be forgotten.” i enjoyed The Summer that Melted Everything a bunch, but Betty; a standalone with spillover into TSTME, has so much more weight. i remember bits and pieces from The Summer that Melted Everything—i remember the language being striking, i remember the framework and a few details in particular, but this one is going to stay in my brain for a lot longer, and there are specific scenes i know are with me for life; not as fond memories of a book i enjoyed, but as straight-up reader scars.

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I don’t know if it’s because this book was more personal to the author or what? — but the way she wrote the setting and the characters was spectacular. It all felt so real and the characters each felt so distinct. McDaniel has created something special here. Characters that evoked emotions, We have it all here. Coming-of-age, grief, trauma, abuse. We get to see how the world around these characters causes such pain, but unlike novels that focus on a small chunk of time, we get to see how these small ripples from a specific day, form into waves over a lifetime. Don’t let it happen to you, Betty. Don’t ever be afraid to be yourself. You don’t wanna live so long only to realize, you ain’t lived at all.” My Final Thoughts on Betty I think it is important to say that this is own voices in a way. It talks about the girl who is Cherokee (her father was Cherokee and mother was white).

McDaniel: When I did that first photo, I thought it looked fine because I’m not a very smiley person. Also, it’s a very dark book and I wanted an appropriate photo to go along with that—I didn’t want to smile for a book about a little boy who is burned to death. The publisher had sent me all these pictures of female authors and told me I wanted to have the right smile. If I smile too big, it’s too cheesy and I’ll be women’s lit or romance. But if I don’t smile enough, I’ll look kind of bitchy. You have to find that middle ground. Some male authors can look like a bulldog on their front stoop and no one will have an issue with that, but female authors have to present a certain image. It’s frustrating. I still can't believe how racist people were and how awful they treated people just because they had different skin color and came with a different culture. Betty is a story inspired by Tiffany McDaniel's mother, Betty and her family secrets. It's a story of abuse, racism and poverty but a story of love through the strong connections Betty has with her father Landon and her siblings. It's also an Appalachian story with Cherokee stories and history. It's not an easy read at times and might not be for the lighter more gentle minded reader; however, it's one of those stories that shows us the dark to see the light in the world around us.

Betty by Tiffany McDaniel – Highly recommended

I would have spent my whole life walkin’ this swamp had it not been for my father. It was Dad who planted trees along the edge of the swamp. In the trees’ branches, he hung light for me to see through the darkness. Every word he spoke to me grew fruit in between this light. Fruit which ripened into sponges. When these sponges fell from the branches into the swamp, they drank in the water until I was standin’ in only the mud that was left. When I looked down, I saw my feet for the first time in years. Holdin’ my feet were hands, their fingers curled up around my soles. These hands were familiar to me. Garden dirt under the fingernails. How could I not know they were the hands of my father? McDaniel: I’m very fair-skinned, so it’s important to separate my experiences from those of my mother and grandfather. My own experiences haven’t had that sort of violence attached to them. I don’t know what it’s like to experience racism. I came of age in predominantly white communities, so I fit in. Mom really struggled. Growing up, people would ask if she was my real mother because of the difference in our skin colors. Only Betty’s father offers an escape from the pain of everyday existence. He tells her beautiful stories about Ohio’s wildlife, their Cherokee heritage, and the family’s ancestry, which captivate both Betty and the reader. Landon has such a gift for animating nature that he makes his audience appreciate every mound of dirt, seedling, and living creature. As he tells Betty, “We bring the earth inside us and restore the knowledge that even the smallest leaf has a soul.” For Landon, the earth connects us to our upbringings, to the generations that came before us, and to the people we’ve loved and lost. Throughout this book, we see how prejudice harms communities, and how dreamlike beauty can exist alongside unbearable pain. McDaniel writes this heartbreaking story with elegance and grace, vividly evoking the mystical relationship between people and the landscape, and the tenderness between father and daughter.