The Women Could Fly

In her sensational sophomore outing, Giddings (Lakewood) delivers an engaging story and blistering social commentary for post-Roe America. Twenty-eight-year-old Michigander Jo Thomas enjoys working at the Museum of Cursed Art and secretly loves her best friend Angie, though she is casually dating Preston. Jo’s status is rather dicey because if a woman doesn’t marry a man by age 30, she is forbidden to work and subject to constant monitoring. Jo is already on the Bureau of Witchcraft’s radar because her mother, Tiana, disappeared years ago and is presumed to be a witch, as Black women are considered more likely to practice magic than white women. Tiana is finally declared dead, and Jo is set to receive a large inheritance, on Tiana’s one condition that she first travel to a mysterious Lake Superior island. When Jo returns, she is immediately imprisoned on suspicion of witchcraft. Narrator Angel Pean agilely presents the novel’s dramatic events as well as Jo’s beautiful island experiences and achingly conveys her struggles against a sexist, racist, and homophobic society.