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description: From a critically acclaimed author a twisty and gorgeously written YA ghost story about young women separated by centuries but connected by a desire to control their futures. Read an excerpt below! I am no longer a creature yet my habits remain. My desires still the old ones. Lurking amidst the brush watching squirrels collect acorns and deer drink from puddles. Watching my girls. I am allowed pleasure here too despite the warnings of the Bible my mother loved so well. It is pleasure and my delight to see my girls their skin supple and sweating their mouths eating their fists clamping over their hips as their legs bend and stretch over the earth. The work of bodies never ends. I particularly like their hair how it grows long and shaggy until lopped off by one of their mothers the priestly one whose thoughts swirl like perfume in lilac time; she finds such joyful thrift in snipping the little girls tresses. Where I had watched Patrick feed Arthur Ganeys horses is now a kitchen with an unlikely polished floor; over what was dirt and hay the priestly mother sweeps up the girls lost tressesgold white mahogany. The priestly ones sister a midwife makes each daughter gulp down spoonfuls of castor and fish oil; one year they each suffered needle jabs given for their own good. Their tears brimmed and they winced under the puncture their betrayed howls ringing out through the open windows.The palomino girl loves so harshly; she sees everything as a prize to be won or lost. The unicorn girls love ripples uncontained; her soul is flimsy easily stained by sadness or goaded into laughter. The dark bay foal who has since become steady on her feet in a manner that I envy rushes through the brush. She is a thirsty creature. I ache when I see her touch the cool water at the bottom of the ravine where Patrick liked to wash.A house helmed by two sisters and their three daughters. The mothers love borne of their sister pact has made a world where no men ever deigned to rule. The daughters love at times is heavy a pail of milk to a waiting hand; other times easy as a hairbrush before Sunday service. It is most visible in their hands: what they make and toss away what they strive to hold. I watch for restfulness. The after hours of tables cleared and dishes washed and floors swept and pencils and needles jabbing at paper and cloth; here their thick love dreams and wraps over each other like hair in a braid. This reminds me of my own sister and I recall my beating heart strong beneath my chemise galloping in grief for her. I think of my own hairlong gone a cats cradle for the faeriesand the relief of unwinding it each night the burden heavy no more. I think of my own hands and what they learned about desire.How quickly everything in Gods world disintegrates. Everything but the loneliness of young women.
language: English
title: The Whitsun Daughters
publisher: Dutton