A tiny upward shove

Essayist and activist Chadburn's debut novel is a magical realism-infused literary feast that boldly mixes fictionalized yet explicit true-crime violence with a biracial girl's coming-of-age, textured by Filipino culture, language, and folklore. It tells the story of Marina Salles, a young Black Filipina murder victim of the notorious real-life pig farmer turned serial killer, Willy Pickton. Marina unwittingly transforms into an aswang (monster) as dictated by a family curse with a thirst for vengeance. Chadburn describes Marina's ancestors and how the monster lineage came to be, then the novel pivots to a dark, harrowing childhood tale of instability and rape mercifully brightened with moments of humor as Marina details her life with her feisty lola (grandma), her troubled mom, and her eventual journey to a group home. Chadburn, a former ward of L.A. County, advocates and writes about foster-care reform, and her novel deftly captures poverty and victimization of youth in vivid and heartbreaking scenarios encapsulated in Marina and her fellow wards' damaged lives. Though the compelling story lines of aswang Marina and human Marina both run throughout the novel, the aswang part takes a back seat as Marina's indelible and devastating horror eclipses everything in a haunting tale of grit and fate.

In Chadburn's astonishing debut, the story of a Filipino woman's short life is told by an aswang spirit. In 1994, after 18-year-old Marina Salles is murdered by serial killer Willie Pickton, the folkloric and omniscient aswang enters her body and recounts Marina's harrowing coming-of-age. As a little girl, she moves with her mother, Mutya, to Westwood after Mutya is accepted at UCLA. While at a party thrown by Mutya's boyfriend, Marina is raped at 13, then placed by child services in a group home in the San Fernando Valley. The environment hardens Marina, though she develops a loving relationship with her new girlfriend, Alex, who is also a victim of child abuse. Marina is emancipated at 16 and moves to a rough South Los Angeles apartment complex where she gets hooked on heroin. Strung out, she goes to Vancouver to help Alex find her mother. She ends up doing sex work to pay for drugs and meets Willie, who preys on young women with drug problems. The author's poetic language enthralls, whether in relating the hardships of past generations of Salles women ("we broadcast them--each conversation a carnival of agonies"), or describing the bleak land of death ("There's no numbing dope, no dick wows, no kitty kitty yum yum, just a floodlight on all the world's needs"). This is electrifying. (Apr.)

A moving but disturbing novel tells the story of a young woman's descent into addiction and sexual violence. This impressive debut novel opens with a gruesome murder, then moves back in time to recount how the lives of a "throwaway" young woman and a serial killer intersected. Chadburn builds her story around a real case, that of Vancouver pig farmer Willie Pickton, who confessed to having killed 49 women, many of them Indigenous and/or sex workers, over two decades before his arrest in 2002. The novel's fictional main character is Marina Salles, who, at age 18 becomes both Pickton's last victim and his avenger thanks to an aswang, a supernatural creature from the folklore of the Philippines (who's also an occasional narrator). Marina's grandmother is Filipina, and she provides a warm household in central California during the girl's childhood in the 1980s. But when Mutya, Marina's restless, self-centered mother, moves to Los Angeles with a boyfriend, Marina in tow, their lives begin to unravel. The boyfriend bails, and Mutya's addictions lead her to sex work; one night when Marina is 13, she brings the girl with her to a party, with disastrous results. Marina finds herself in foster care, cut off from both mother and grandmother and trying to figure out the harsh rules of her new environment. The foster facility she's in turns out to be a training ground for drug use and sex work. While there, she falls in love with Alex, another girl, but their relationship is a short moment of sweetness in Marina's journey to her fate. Chadburn's prose is sometimes lovely, always compelling, and she handles multiple storylines skillfully. Marina is engaging and heartbreaking, and other characters are vividly portrayed as well--including Pickton. The novel is a relentless revelation of the everyday exploitation of girls and women, but readers should be aware that it describes rape and other forms of violence in horrific detail, over and over. A dark, powerful novel traces the trajectory of a murder victim's life. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.