The book is narrated by six characters across four generations: the wild-spirited Myra, her grandmother Byrdie; their neighbor Doug Cotter (who loves Myra from afar); Myra’s grown twins, Johnny and Laura; and finally, her abusive husband, John Odom, as an old man. These voices weave together a textured patchwork of life in a world geographically isolated but full of humanity. The use of the multiple voices, however, can also be off-putting as it sometimes makes the narrative feel fragmented.
Girls marry young on the mountain, fleeing their families for the boys they love. Lives are hard, and romance dies quickly. All too soon, these boys become reckless men, inhabiting the dark corners of alcoholism and spousal abuse. The pattern is such a commonplace that Myra and the women in her family come to believe that it’s a fate they’ve inherited.
Not long after they’re married, Myra’s husband begins locking her up for days at a time in a crawl space under their house as punishment for trying to leave. He frequently comes home belligerent, raping her in the yard one time, beating her with his belt another. She quickly becomes a broken woman, the wild spirit of her youth gone after just a year of marriage. But a brief, torrid affair with a soothsayer named Ford Hendrix shows Myra she can get out. So she brings the ax down - literally - on the man she once loved, maiming but not killing John, who might be the father of her unborn twins.
This act alters the course of her life. She takes flight, leaving her husband and returning to Byrdie on the mountain where she gives birth to her children. But her freedom comes with a price. Her actions leave her with a sense of guilt so acute that she rarely leaves the house.
She’s sent to live in an institution, and her children grow up in foster care, struggling to figure out where they’ve come from and whether they’ll turn out like her. The twins and townspeople are unaware of Myra’s past so the root of her madness remains a mystery to them. Some call her a witch. Others say she killed a man.
