Betty: The International Bestseller

Product Information

Betty is a story inspired by Tiffany McDaniel's mother, Betty and her family secrets. It's a story of abuse, racism and poverty but a story of love through the strong connections Betty has with her father Landon and her siblings. It's also an Appalachian story with Cherokee stories and history. It's not an easy read at times and might not be for the lighter more gentle minded reader; however, it's one of those stories that shows us the dark to see the light in the world around us. McDaniel: When I did that first photo, I thought it looked fine because I’m not a very smiley person. Also, it’s a very dark book and I wanted an appropriate photo to go along with that—I didn’t want to smile for a book about a little boy who is burned to death. The publisher had sent me all these pictures of female authors and told me I wanted to have the right smile. If I smile too big, it’s too cheesy and I’ll be women’s lit or romance. But if I don’t smile enough, I’ll look kind of bitchy. You have to find that middle ground. Some male authors can look like a bulldog on their front stoop and no one will have an issue with that, but female authors have to present a certain image. It’s frustrating. i enjoyed The Summer that Melted Everything a bunch, but Betty; a standalone with spillover into TSTME, has so much more weight. i remember bits and pieces from The Summer that Melted Everything—i remember the language being striking, i remember the framework and a few details in particular, but this one is going to stay in my brain for a lot longer, and there are specific scenes i know are with me for life; not as fond memories of a book i enjoyed, but as straight-up reader scars. Sometimes books come your way in the oddest of circumstances. Be it a friend mentioning they loved a book and sending you a copy, or you see a book getting buzz and it’s randomly in a Free Little Library as you walk by.

In this photo, Mamaw Alka is holding my mother as a baby. It’s 1954, and Mom is just a few weeks old. The oldest daughter, Fraya, stands at her mother’s side, while Flossie, the middle daughter, strikes a pose in front wearing cowboy boots in just her size, her pale blonde hair blowing in the wind like her mother’s. I always look at this photo and notice the way the house appears to be leaning, as if about to slide off a hillside. And they, standing there, ready as a family, hoping for the best.I realized then that pants and skirts, like gender itself, were not seen as equal in our society. To wear pants was to be dressed for power. But to wear a skirt was to be dressed to wash the dishes. Someone important. You know why I call you Little Indian? So that you know you’re already someone important.” Magical and moving Cherokee myths & legends: deeply touching tales a father, (Landon), passes on to Betty... Her work isn’t done yet; she says her publisher recently scared her when pointing out how well a debut must do to warrant a second book. She’s not sure yet what that will be either – maybe one of the seven other novels, or something new. Her current favourite (she has the title and the first line) is set during the Holocaust, and follows two Jewish siblings who escape Nazi Germany for Breathed, where they set up a camp of judgment as they deal with survivor guilt. Whatever it is, she only has one goal: making it “worth it” for readers. “I grew up with not a lot of money so I remember what it was like to go to the bookstore and only be able to spend so much. When you got a bad book, it was kinda like, ‘Aw, man, I could have bought something better’. So I think about that – someone is investing in you, and I try and write the best book I can.” The main theme of the strong sense of family bond and loyalty was captured so perfectly. I was teary eyed more than a few times while experiencing the love and comfort these siblings offered each other.

At the end of the book, I felt totally exhausted, but I’m so glad that I read this. What a wonderful, but difficult read! I have never read anything like it.

Betty by Tiffany McDaniel – Highly recommended

I still can't believe how racist people were and how awful they treated people just because they had different skin color and came with a different culture.

But despite the hardship she faces, Betty is resilient. Her curiosity about the natural world, her fierce love for her sisters, and her father's brilliant stories are kindling for the fire of her own imagination, and in the face of all she bears witness to, Betty discovers an escape: she begins to write. She recounts the horrors of her family's past and present with pen and paper and buries them deep in the dirt--moments that has stung her so deeply, she could not tell them, until now. Inspired by the life of her own mother, Tiffany McDaniel sets out to free the past by telling this heartbreaking yet magical story--a remarkable novel that establishes her as one of the freshest and most important voices in American fiction. somehow be beautiful and with good enough knees to take the sponge of the kitchen floor every Saturday... Betty is woven of many things, light and dark, and most of all it is life in all its shades: all its brilliances and disappointments, sadnesses and hopes. Vivid and lucid, Betty has stayed with me.' - Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies Betty is a story based on the author’s mother’s life. It’s written in first person with Betty narrating. She shares the earliest history of both her parents, and then takes us through the family’s life as her siblings are born, before and after she is born, and up through the years as she comes-of-age.I voted for The Summer That Melted Everything to win every literary prize in 2016. I will be right there shouting from the rooftops that I loved this book. Please be aware that while I call this book beautiful in so many ways, dark things happen to and within this family. That is not what this book is about. Powerful, emotional, beautifully descriptive and haunting, I will never forget Betty, her indelible story, or the way she shared it through her daughter’s masterful skill. McDaniel’s book is very firmly set in the 80s: Fielding gets his first kiss while watching ET, his older brother Grand is haunted by the threat of Aids. Starting in 1984, a year before McDaniel was born, she says the era “felt like a decade-long summer – it was bright, big hair, big ambitions. So I took the heat of that decade and applied it to the heat in the story.” The novel is peppered with small references to her own upbringing – her family, like her characters, say “winda” instead of window, she says. But the religious fervour and the discrimination are products of keen observation from her childhood. The instances of racism and homophobia are at times pure venom, while some are benignly sanctimonious. “Like my momma used to say, when you play in thorns, you ain’t gonna get nothin’ but scratched,” one character mildly muses about Aids.