With THE SUMMER THAT MELTED EVERYTHING, Tiffany McDaniel debuted as an interesting voice, a writer who was not afraid to mix the fantastic into her story of race and identity. Her much-anticipated sophomore effort is likewise a reverie that stares down pain with raw honesty while delighting in oblique descriptions and lyrical dialogue.

BETTY is a fictionalized account of McDaniel’s family: her grandparents, Alka Lark and Landon Carpenter, and her mother, Betty Carpenter. Betty grows up in Breathed, Ohio (the same town where McDaniel’s first novel is set, and her protagonists make a cameo here as well). It is a small Appalachian town in the 1960s, and the Carpenters stand out for a number of reasons. They are poor, eccentric and Cherokee on Landon’s side.

"[T]he book asks readers to think critically and emotionally about the power (or lack thereof) that comes with structures --- systemic, social and familial --- and of race, class, gender, religion and culture. McDaniel has crafted an affecting story."

Alka’s marriage to Landon provides her with the means to escape her horrifically abusive parents, but their relationship is one of hardship and loss, with her severe depression further complicating their family dynamic. Betty is one of six Carpenter children: the other five are dangerous eldest brother Leland, sweet Fraya, ambitious Flossie, cautious Trustin and peculiar Lint. She physically appears the most Cherokee, and although she is bullied more than her siblings at school and in town, she is also the closest with her father.

McDaniel’s Landon comes close to the “wise and natural Indian” trope, but all of her characters occupy a slightly unreal space of attributes over solidity. He is a poetic dreamer, a healer and a gardener who instructs his children using tall tales and Cherokee folklore and tradition. His gentleness --- a few arguably justified exceptions notwithstanding --- counterbalance Alka’s cruelty and bitterness, traits that McDaniel also seeks to justify. Breathed is populated by many an odd character, each with a lesson to impart to Betty and often connecting her, in hindsight, to her father’s legacy.

In many ways, BETTY is Landon’s story; he looms large, and his wild and fabulous parenting keeps Betty, if not her siblings, safe and on a path to security and survival. In accepting what she shares with her father as the best of her, she learns to love herself and her parents, and to honor her heritage and history.

McDaniel’s chapters offer bleak chronological anecdotes as Betty grows up in Breathed, coming to realizations about her family and herself. She grows into a writer, writing her past and the strange and hazardous world in which she was formed. This story then is her mythology, and the novel itself is better when read that way --- allowing the unrelenting tragedy of the Carpenters, who are often destroyed and rarely reshaped, to exist both as reality and as a prism of reality. Thrown into the mix are the curse of the Peacock family house where the Carpenters live and a reign of terror by an unknown shooter whose deeds are mostly told through weird newspaper articles. McDaniel doesn’t need any of this here, and readers will find their inclusions either distracting or welcome (if disorienting) tidbits.

There is a lot in BETTY, perhaps more than enough for multiple novels, and sometimes all the metaphors and symbolism, quirky appearances and terrible acts threaten to overwhelm the story. In the end, though, the book asks readers to think critically and emotionally about the power (or lack thereof) that comes with structures --- systemic, social and familial --- and of race, class, gender, religion and culture. McDaniel has crafted an affecting story.