Blood Water Paint, by Joy McCullough

Today at Kirkus, I'm talking about Joy McCullough's Blood Water Paint:

Her memories of her mother—and more specifically, her memories of the stories her mother told her when she was young—are still with her, and are a source of solace and strength and inspiration. McCullough gives us those memories directly, in her mother’s voice—we experience them as Artemisia—in prose, rather than in verse. It’s all incredibly effective, and like the arc of Artemisia’s story, those passages provide commentary on the current day—from society’s low bar of what defines a Good Man (Well, at least he’s not a wifebeater!) to the knowledge that predators aren’t always easy to spot, because they don’t always hide in the shadows.