Protected: This Cocky Stranger Is Offering to Kill for Me

Whidbey begins with a leaving. Or an arrival. Both arrivals and leavings always hold pieces of the other. We are with Birdie, an adult survivor of sexual abuse and a lead voice in T Kira Māhealani Madden’s new novel, who is on a ferry to the titular island. And on that ferry a conversation occurs and we see her arrive into another part of herself. 

From the first sentences of its unforgettable first chapter, you feel you are being mesmerized by Madden’s novel, enrolled in an almost terrifying, all-consuming kind of engagement. This is what happens to me when I am reading a master at work. Every word seemed chiseled precisely, as if each were shaped and created specifically for this text, this moment, this arriving. 

Whidbey asks many of the hardest questions a book can ask. It drops us down, right into the heart of lived traumas and those who do great harm. Part of Birdie’s arrival is shaped by a stranger, a man named Rich, who appeals to a part of her we sense does not usually get to rise to the surface, asking of Birdie’s abuser:

Does he deserve to die?

He doesn’t deserve to live. 

That’s the same thing, Rich said. 

I don’t think it is, actually.

Within just a few pages, Madden is asking us to consider on an existential level what it means to deserve a life. And these considerations are earned, they occur naturally, as a gentle thrill of fear pulses through these early pages. 

Whidbey does what fiction is meant to do. Or at least, what I hope for it to do. It asks you to become the kind of person that does not run from life’s difficulties. It unapologetically dives into what we so often turn our eyes away from and I believe that it is not only a masterpiece, but a book that can and will change lives. 

I read Madden’s new novel and felt honest awe: a raw and full-bodied understanding that this work, this book, was wrought from the hardest of suffering and, guided by Madden’s gifts of compassion, wit, and precision, became a story both engaging and beautiful. I think you should read it.

– Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Author of Chain Gang All Stars