DELIVER ME

A young Missouri woman contends with her past and future when a childhood friend moves in upstairs.

Dee-Dee, a former Pentecostal who still struggles with her confining religious upbringing, works at a meatpacking plant in small Cassville, Missouri, where she lives with her intermittently employed boyfriend, Daddy. Desperate to become a mother after five miscarriages, she's thrilled to learn she's pregnant, despite her mother's disapproval and Daddy's lack of interest. But when another miscarriage coincides with the arrival of Sloane, Dee-Dee's first love and former close friend, Dee-Dee decides to keep the loss secret and continue to prepare for the baby's arrival. When she learns that Sloane is also pregnant, her determination to live out her dream of motherhood deepens, and the lengths she's willing to go to keep up the act spirals into increasingly dangerous territory. Nash excels at capturing the claustrophobia of rural poverty and religious fundamentalism, homing in on seemingly small details, like a dirty sink, to illustrate the grinding conditions of Dee-Dee's life. Dee-Dee's desire to escape and inability to do so are harrowing, and the story unfolds like a thriller. Littered with bizarre details, such as Daddy's obsession with exotic insects, the book blurs the lines between reality and fantasy—specifically regarding Dee-Dee's imagined pregnancy—taking the reader deeply into Dee-Dee's unraveling mental state.

Haunting and at times relentlessly cruel, this novel will keep readers guessing.