The Magic of Rhode Island

There is something about Rhode Island.  The unfettered nature preserves that are dense and wild with thicket.  The soft, sandy beaches pronounced by bluffs.  The soothing, sea air that seems to level everyone and remind us that something so much greater than us exists.

Emma Cline's The Girls

"I looked up because of the laughter, and kept looking because of the girls."  Northern California in the late 1960s.  Just as that era's initiatives of peace and love were punctuated by brutal violence, so is the group that Evie Boyd stumbles upon one afternoon in the park.  Emma Cline's work of upmarket fiction is haunting and well sculpted.  She weaves the reader into the drug ridden cult of a wannabe musician.  The group is ultimately bad, but the foundation of some of their principles seem positive.