Ask a Bookseller: 'On the Savage Side'

Aden Evosirch of the Winchester Book Gallery in Winchester, Va., recommends “On the Savage Side,” by Tiffany McDaniel. It is based on a true unsolved murder case in rural Ohio where six women, known as the Chillicothe Six, disappeared from the area in 2014 and 2015. Four were later found dead.

McDaniel's novel creates twin sisters, sex workers named Arcade and Daffodil, who see their friends go missing and find their bodies washed up by the river.

Evosirch says the book has elements of a thriller, but at its heart, it's a literary novel, where both the river and the town of Chillicothe feel like characters.

The novel “hones in on the interaction between these two twins and what it would be like to feel like you might go missing at any moment and no one would care,” says Evosirch.

Still, this is a story deals with violence and other heavy subjects, as the name indicates. We follow the twins from a childhood of abuse and poverty, raised by a mother who is a sex worker and heroine addict.

It's a story about generational trauma and quiet acts of resistance, about the value and humanity of women who don't fit the kind of victim profile that triggers community-wide searches when they disappear.