Girls with Long Shadows

"The Virgin Suicides meets Where the Crawdads Sing in this intoxicating debut Southern gothic novel about identical triplets living on their gram's dilapidated golf course in small-town Texas, who are forced to confront the devastating implications of their collective anonymity and burgeoning desires when female teenage angst turns deadly and triplets become twins. There never was a gator killing around here, contrary to everlasting rumor, and there was only one real murder, but it seems each bad thing that happens is like an incantation invoking the Binderup family, its women and their dying. Identical triplets Baby A, Baby B, and Baby C Binderup were welcomed into the world as their mother was ushered out of it, leaving them nameless and in the care of their Gram Isadora, whose maternal instincts vanished alongside her daughter. Nineteen years later, the triplets work at their Gram's crumbling golf course in Longshadow, Texas, where the ever-watchful eyes of the town observe them perched on lawnmowers, serving up glasses of ice-cold lemonade to golfers, swimming in the murky waters of the neighboring bayou, or slipping t-shirts off their sunburnt shoulders in hopes of attracting the kind of attention they are only beginning to understand. Through the eyes of cautious Baby B, we watch as lustful Baby A and introverted Baby C find matches among the town boys. Even Baby B has noticed that the town's golden boy seems to be intrigued by her, only her. Just as it begins to appear that the young women's wish to be seen as individuals and not the otherworldly unit onto which the town projects its fear and desire has been granted, a seemingly trivial kiss is bestowed on the wrong sister, leading to a moment of unspeakable violence that will upend the triplets' world forever. Laced with a strong undercurrent of menace and throbbing with poetic prose, Girls with Long Shadows is electrified by the threat of female teenage angst turned deadly as insecurities are weaponized and tight bonds between sisters are severed. It will leave you asking: to what lengths would I go to claim my own personhood?"-- Provided by publisher.