An epic novel about Civil War-era Nashville's "public women," an age-old secret society, and the earth-shaking power of the female"A beautiful spinning knife of a...

An epic novel about Civil War-era Nashville's "public women," an age-old secret society, and the earth-shaking power of the female

"A beautiful spinning knife of a story that whirls back through the 1800s, the 1500s, the 4th century BC, and the age of myth to slice out an image of the pain and the power that women have inherited from antiquity." --Kevin Brockmeier, O. Henry Prize-winning author of The Ghost Variations

In 1862, after a tragedy at home, twenty-two-year-old Sylvie Swift parts ways with her twin brother to trace the origins of an enigmatic playscript that's landed on their doorstep. This text leads her to Nashville, an occupied city bustling with soldiers, saboteurs, partisans, powerful men--and powerful women. Sylvie trans lates the playscript by day, but at night, drawn into the work by the chief of the Union Army's Secret Service, she acts as a spy.

Both endeavors acquaint her with a sisterhood whose members--including Hannah, a fiery revolutionary to whom Sylvie is increasingly drawn--possess potentially monstrous powers. Sylvie soon becomes entangled in the Cult of Chaos, a feminist society steadfast in its ancient mission to eradicate the violence of men.

Inspired by Aristophanes' Lysistrata and the true story of Nashville's attempt to exile its prostitutes during the American Civil War, Daughters of Chaos weaves together "found" texts, fabulism, and queer themes to question familiar notions of history and family, warfare and power.


Author: Jen Fawkes
Publisher: Overlook Press
Published: 07/09/2024
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.50w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9781419772474


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 06/10/2024
Booklist 06/01/2024 pg. 49

About the Author
Jen Fawkes is the author of Mannequin and Wife, a 2020 Shirley Jackson Award Nominee, winner of the 2023 Phillip H. McMath Post-Publication Book Award, and a Foreword INDIES gold medalist. Her collection Tales the Devil Told Me was a Foreword INDIES silver medalist, a Largehearted Boy Favorite Collection of 2021, and a finalist for the 2022 World Fantasy Award for Single-Author Story Collection. Her fiction won the 2021 Porter Fund Literary Prize and has appeared in One Story, Lit Hub, The Iowa Review, Best Small Fictions, and more. A two-time finalist for the Calvino Prize for fabulist fiction, Jen lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.