The Weight of Blood (2014) by Laura McHugh

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Weight of Blood (2014)

by Laura McHugh

Henbane, Missouri

Missouri: 6/11

  It is hard for me to read Ozark set noir without thinking about the Netflix drama, Ozark, with Jason Bateman.  There is a strong connection between Ozark noir and Appalachia noir: characters who live in or around a "holler."   Few non-white people of ANY kind in evidence. Generally speaking, a world where the lives of people, particularly children are cheap. The Weight of Blood ticks all those boxes, with a story about an attractive Iowa orphan who "ages out' of the foster system and unwittingly signs a labor contract with a man who is going to turn her into a prostitute.  She thwarts his scheme by marrying his brother.  They have a child, who is the central protagonist, interspersed with flashback chapters from the POV of the Mom (now gone) and the two brothers, as well. 

  I think the plot is meant to be a thriller in terms of finding out what actually happened to the Mom of the protagonist and solving the gruesome murder of a local wayward teen.  Normally I'd take a shot along the lines of these characters are uninteresting because they don't do anything or go anywhere, but that is not quite the case here- probably because the central mother/daughter pair are outsiders (half outsider) and the two brothers are well off and reasonably sophisticated about the world.