The Daughter Ship: A Novel

This irreverent debut delivers a headlong human comedy of trauma and triumph, narrated by the concealed inner selves of a woman on the brink: Katherine, a lost creative soul and suburban mother of two, who has struggled into her forties with the urge to self-harm.

'Tracks the scattered parts of one woman as she fractures and finds herself over the course of her lifetime. A wholly original and unforgettable debut.' —Julia Phillips, best-selling author of Disappearing Earth

Katherine, an attentive mother to her teenagers, comfortably married to her strapping provider of a husband, longs to overcome her dark thoughts and intermittent fears of sexual intimacy.

This brisk, mesmerizing version of her life is told in alternating short chapters by Truitt, Star, and Smooshed Bug—her inner children, each with their particular strategy for coping with Katherine’s past at the hands of a hopeless mother and a terrifying, seductive father. Several of her female ancestors, Confederate widows and their daughters, who’ve imposed a legacy of racism and damage on her bloodline, also join the telling.

The assembled ghosts and contenders for Katherine’s ear are gathered in a rusting WWII submarine off the coast of Virginia Beach where the truth of her life is, quite literally, submerged. Will they surface with it? Will they protect her from it, or deliver it to her? 

This unforgettable chorus of charming selves, battling over Katherine’s wellbeing, is unified by their hope for her future, as they collaborate to shape a personal narrative like no other we’ve experienced in fiction.