Betty

June 22, 2020
McDaniel bases her raw if overwrought bildungsroman (after The Summer That Melted Everything) on the life of her mother. Born in 1954, narrator Betty is one of eight siblings whose cherished father, Landon Carpenter, a Cherokee, tells wondrous tales, and whose mother, Alka Lark, shares cruel truths (“God hates us,” she says, referring to women). Betty recounts poverty, puberty, and the tragic loss of one sibling after the other. Betty looks like Landon and is abused at school by the prejudiced children and teachers of Breathed, Ohio. The episodic narrative revolves around Betty’s struggles over whether to divulge a family secret involving incest and rape at the story’s rotten core. Along the way, Landon, a finely rendered character, dispenses most of the wisdom (“Some people are as beautiful and soft as peonies, others as hard as a mountain”), but McDaniel gives Betty exceedingly precocious insights (at nine: “William Shakespeare wrote my father a Romeo heart and a Hamlet mind at the same time Henry David Thoreau composed him to have sympathy toward nature and a longing for paradise to be regained”). Still, she brilliantly describes Betty’s self-image based on her father’s stories of their ancestors. McDaniel is an ambitious and sincere writer, and occasionally her work transcends.

Narrator Dale Dickey portrays Betty, a young woman raised in the Appalachian region of Ohio. Betty is often called Little Indian by her father, a Cherokee. Her mother is white. With dark skin and a pure, bright spirit, Betty endures cruel racism, a dysfunctional family, and a variety of other heartbreaking tragedies as she goes through life. Dickey captures the innocence and hurt of a young woman who is doing her best to appreciate the magic around her, even while suffering. Dickey perfectly delivers the poetic mood of this audiobook, giving a believable performance with an Appalachian accent. Her narration captures the beauty of the story, while still embracing Betty's struggles. V.B. � AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine