‘Every Bone’ Speaks In This Painful, Beautiful Debut Novel

Sourcebooks Misty can speak to everything around her — from the mice in the walls, to the unusual sculptures next door — and everything seems to answer back. But when it comes to naming what her friend has done to her, she cannot find the words. Deep-rooted secrets like this one have long wrapped themselves around an Appalachian holler where generations of women grow up and disappear. Now a strange garden has risen, almost overnight, beside a trailer. All glass and sharp edges, it thrives where nothing would grow before. Ten-year-old Misty, her sister Penny, their mother, neighbors, cousins, and even the local preacher, can see the garden, and Misty can hear it speak its name. Every Bone A Prayer, the slipstream — that liminal combination of the literary and the fantastical — debut novel written by a survivor of child sexual abuse, bears within its pages striking beauty and strangeness in equal measure. I’m not going to veer from the truth any more than author Ashley Blooms does: This