Available Formats
Hardback
Published: 29th October 2024
Hardback, Large Print Edition
Published: 1st March 2025
Paperback
Published: 2nd September 2025
Paperback, Export Edition
Published: 1st October 2024
Madwoman
By (Author) Chelsea Bieker
Thorndike Press
Thorndike Press
1st March 2025
Large Print Edition
United States
General
Fiction
Family life fiction
Thriller / suspense fiction
Hardback
Width 140mm, Height 216mm
Clove has gone to extremes to keep her past a secret. Thanks to her lies, shes landed the life of her dreams, complete with a safe husband and two adoring children who will never know the terror that was routine in her own childhood. If her buried anxiety threatens to breach the surface, Clove (if that is really her name) focuses on finding the right supplement, the right gratitude meditation.
But when she receives a letter from a womens prison in California, her past comes screeching into the present, entangling her in a dangerous game with memory and the people she thought she had outrun. As we race between her precarious present-day life in Portland, Oregon and her childhood in a Waikiki high-rise with her mother and father, Clove is forced to finally unravel the defining day of her life. How did she survive that day, and what will it take to end the cycle of violence Will the truth undo her, or could it ultimately save her
In the guise of a suspense story, Bieker delves into the heart of what it really means to survive violence.KIRKUS
"Though this novel has plenty of love, generosity, and absurdist humor . . . what makes [Madwoman] so moving and so brilliant is how it unpacks the legacy of childhood abuse, when even innocent acts by another person can feel like an immediate threat to survival."OPRAH DAILY
Chelsea Bieker is the author of three books, most recently the nationally bestselling novel, Madwoman, a Book of the Month club pick The New York Times calls brilliant in its depiction of the long shadows cast by domestic violence. Her first novel, Godshot, was longlisted for The Center For Fictions First Novel Prize and named a Barnes & Noble Pick of the Month. Her story collection, Heartbroke won the California Book Award and was a New York Times Best California Book of 2022. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Marie Claire UK, People, The Cut, Wall Street Journal, and others. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers Award, as well as residencies from MacDowell and Tin House.