Margot lives with her mom in a run-down apartment. They’re barely getting by; there’s never enough food or heat, and forget about love. After she finds a photograph from her mother’s younger days, Margot becomes obsessed with trying to learn about her mother’s past. Why did she leave Phalene, the small town where she grew up? Why won’t she talk about it?
Burn Our Bodies Down takes off when Margot goes to Phalene to unravel the fabric of her life, starting with a devastating fire and the death of an unidentified girl who happens to look just like Margot. Add in a grandmother who seems loving but who’s definitely hiding something, a tangled ancestral mystery and a heaping dose of brimstone, and you’ll only have scratched the surface of Rory Power’s fast-paced, unnerving thriller.
Burn Our Bodies Down is a tightly woven tale of intergenerational trauma and abuse that maps out a truly poisonous family tree. The novel’s earth-shattering suspense builds to a resolution that will leave readers unsettled in the best way.
