A Bitten Plant: A Novel

For fans of Megan Abbott and Martin MacInnes, a haunting debut feminist noir novel—with a holistic agriculture twist—about a twenty-nine-year-old soil scientist who embarks upon a journey of emotional survival after assault.

Camille is a child of the earth who has made a career in soil preservation, tending the land like it’s an extension of her own self. At twenty-nine years old, she abandons her beloved farm to work in urban, potentially earth-saving, agriculture. Just three days after she moves to the city, however, a man pulls her into an alley and violently assaults her.

In the surreal aftermath of the attack, Camille is asked to work with a police sketch artist, Asher. Forced to relive the traumatic event for the sketch interview, she wonders if she’s alive or dead—but leaving the interview, she’s sure of one thing: If there’s one person in this horrible city she trusts, it’s Asher.

Soon after meeting Asher, Camille meets his best friend, Max, a medical examiner. Upon learning that Max regularly performs autopsies, Camille imagines him performing hers if she’d died in the attack—a flight of fancy that leads her to choose him as the unlikely tether between her imagined death and the unfathomable circumstances of her new existence. In the company of a medical examiner and a police sketch artist, Camille must determine what it is about life that makes it worth living.