The Flood Girls

Starred review from December 21, 2015
In Fifield’s excellent fiction debut, alcoholic Rachel Flood returns to her hometown of Quinn, Mont. (pop. 956), after a nine-year self-imposed exile, coming back to atone for her teenage behavior—out-of-control fighting, drinking, and promiscuous sex. Her mother, Laverna Flood, is the hard-boiled, vulgar owner of the Dirty Shame, a bar where mixed drinks are too much trouble to make and fistfights are encouraged. Rachel and Laverna haven’t spoken since she left. Rachel’s unexpected appearance is not welcome, but she is determined to complete Alcoholics Anonymous’s 12-step program, to make amends and redeem herself. Fifield has created a colorful, quirky, and amusing cast of small-town characters. Rachel’s best friend and protector is Jake, her next-door neighbor, a sensitive and worldly 12-year-old, who is also a snappy dresser and likes to do laundry. Barflies Red Mabel and Black Mabel and gas station cashier Martha Man Hands also become friends, but only after Rachel is forced to play on her mother’s wacky and winless softball team, the Flood Girls. This hilarious and profane story takes a tragic turn at the end, revealing just how fragile love and friendship can be. Agent: Jenny Bent, the Bent Agency.

December 15, 2015
Rachel Flood returns home to make amends nine years after her mother, Laverna, kicked her out. When she left she was an 18-year-old, bed-hopping alcoholic with no regard for the people she hurt or the relationships she ruined. Now, in 1991, she's a year sober and stuck on AA's eighth and ninth steps. But the people of her hometown of Quinn, Montana (population 956), remember the old Rachel, and it takes timewhile she tends bar at her mother's establishment, the Dirty Shame, and plays right field for the Flood Girls, the women's softball team her mother coachesfor them to come around. Fortunately, Rachel has support from Jake Bailey, her gay, 12-year-old neighbor; volunteer fireman and handyman Bucky Peterson; and the seven old men of her local AA group. Fifield's debut is an exaggerated, no-holds-barred portrait of a small town that doesn't easily forget or forgive, and it turns alternately laugh-out-loud funny and sadly all-too-true. But a veer to the dark near the end of the narrative leaches some of the pleasure out of what has preceded. A notable accomplishment with a sad aftertaste.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

Starred review from November 15, 2015
A prodigal daughter returns to her hometown in Montana to make amends; mayhem and hilarity ensue. When Rachel Flood returns to Quinn, population 956, moving into the ruined trailer bequeathed her by her father, the reception is cool. Her mother, Laverna, who owns a bar called The Dirty Shame, is "surprised that her daughter had shown up to claim the inheritance. Laverna thought of Rachel the same way she thought about the time her appendix had burst--sometimes things could come from inside your body and suddenly betray you, nearly killing you." And that's one of the more positive reactions. Growing up in Quinn, blonde, beautiful Rachel was the town slut, blamed for countless divorces, a murder, and a robbery. Nine years later, she's gotten sober in Alcoholics Anonymous and returned against her sponsor's advice to make amends. The trailer she's inherited is next door to her former best friend, Krystal, who's now shacked up with a horrible, damaged man named Bert, their baby, and Krystal's older child, 12-year-old Jake. Young Jake is debut novelist Fifield's finest creation, his outfits and obsessions (Madonna, Jackie Collins, Erica Kane) laid out in loving detail. "He dressed in satin pajamas, lime in color, and...sprayed his quilt with a bottle of Lady Stetson perfume, another thrift store find, the contents stretched with tap water." Other characters include Black Mabel and Red Mabel--"While Black Mabel dressed to instill fear, Red Mabel would just as soon punch you in the face"; Buley Savage Connor, a morbidly obese, 60-year-old thrift store proprietor; Rocky Bailey, her 30-year-old boyfriend; Martha Man Hands; Jim Number Three; and packs of lesbian silver and talc miners. Several of the above play on The Dirty Shame's women's softball team, whose 1991 season defines the arc of the tale. It includes bar fights and AA meetings, a parade, a wedding, and a black bear, all of which Fifield juggles beautifully until the ending, which feels both inevitable and wrong. Read it anyway. The Wild West earns its name all over again in this lovable chronicle of small-town insanity.

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