MADWOMAN

For readers of Lisa Taddeo and Nightbitch, MADWOMAN tells the story of Clove, a woman who has gone to extremes to keep her past a secret.

Thanks to her lies, she's landed the life of her dreams, complete with a safe husband and two adoring children. But motherhood is not turning out to be the salve she thought it would be. Between her obsession with wellness, secret credit card debt, and mounting post-weaning anxiety, she is overwhelmed as it is. But when she receives a letter from a women's prison in California that has the potential to expose the violent past Clove has worked so hard to keep buried, she becomes entangled in a dangerous game with memory and the people she thought she had outrun. Toggling between Clove's precarious present-day life in Portland and her traumatic upbringing with her parents in Waikiki, MADWOMAN is a novel about cycle-breaking and addiction, motherloss and inheritance; it is an exploration of the long tendrils of violence, and the ways in which that violence can be linked, inextricably, with love. Chelsea Bieker is the author of the debut novel GODSHOT, which was a finalist for both the Oregon and California Book Awards, longlisted for The Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, and named a Barnes & Noble Pick of the Month. Her story collection, HEARTBROKE, was a New York Times "Best California Book of 2022" and an NPR Best Book of the Year. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, The Cut, McSweeney's, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers' Award, as well as residencies at MacDowell and Tin House. Originally from California's Central valley, she lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two children.