Perish

March 1, 2022

After numerous fellowships, Watkins debuts with a saga reuniting a Black Texan family at the deathbed of matriarch Helen Jean Turner. The family's ongoing traumas are revealed through the stories of four main characters: Julie B., who regrets her wasted opportunities and the iron control of Helen Jean; troubled police officer Alex; Jan, a mother of two who dreams of leaving her troubled hometown behind; and Lydia, whose repeated miscarriages are threatening her marriage. Which bonds can be repaired here, and which are broken forever?

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Starred review from June 27, 2022
In this devastating and gut-wrenching debut, Watkins explores the generational trauma and violence endured by a Black Texas family. The story begins in the 1950s with 16-year-old Helen Jean, who becomes pregnant after the death of her beloved mother. It’s not the first time; Helen Jean’s cousin Ernestine, knowledgeable in abortifacient home remedies, has aided her before. But now, despite hints that she may have been impregnated by a family member and not the lover she eventually marries, Helen Jean hears an inner voice, “a mouth inside her trying to crawl its way out,” beseeching her to “bear it or perish yourself.” She goes on to have four children: Wayne, victimized by his uncle and isolated in a ramshackle shed by his mother; Julie B., who learns to survive by taking advantage of her mother’s cash and benefits; Ruby Nell, who, after suffering sexual abuse at the hands of Wayne and his friends, devolves with crushing mental health issues; and Marie, intellectually challenged and virtually ignored by her mother. Watkins demonstrates a mastery of alternating points of view, including those of Julie B.; Ruby Nell’s daughter, Lydia, who has recurring miscarriages; Julie B’s daughter, Jan, who contends with unhealed trauma; and her son Alex, who suffers from excruciating PTSD and the most extreme manifestations of years of childhood trauma. Evocative language (“this place where the past is a constant haunting”) tellingly illuminates the harm done to each of the family members, as they find some redemption in disclosing family secrets at Helen Jean’s deathbed. With grace and aplomb, Watkins electrifies and shatters. Agent: Samantha Shea, Georges Borchardt Agency.

July 1, 2022
Watkins' debut novel follows a Texan family's journey home to visit their matriarch on her deathbed. Over the course of the novel, Helen Jean, her daughter Julie B., and her grandchildren, Alex, Jan, and Lydia, are all forced to face the traumas they've attempted to bury. The book opens with Helen Jean making a spiritual decision to go through with the pregnancy she can't, after all, abort. Her choice to keep quiet about the origins of her condition forms the root of the generational trauma her children and grandchildren will inherit. As the family gathers at Helen Jean's bedside, Watkins confidently places mirrors in front of her characters, forcing them to face themselves, their indiscretions, and their loved ones' shortcomings. Recurring themes of sexual assault and other traumas soak these pages, to which Watkins also lends a searing, honest humanity and satisfying complexity of characters. Her bold and captivating writing keeps readers floating through time, leaving us with thought-provoking revelations regarding healing that begins with loving and forgiving oneself before it can be extended to others.

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August 1, 2022
A Texas family deals with a long history of abuse. "We give up easy," says one character to her cousin. "Something killed the fight in us." That's an understatement. Watkins' debut follows four members of a family who reunite in their hometown of Jerusalem, Texas, to say goodbye--or something like it--to their ailing matriarch, Helen Jean, who's hospitalized and not expected to make it out. There's Julie B., Helen Jean's only surviving child, who's 61 and is "just now figuring [herself] out"; she realizes she's spent most of her life in denial. Julie B. has two children, each struggling in their own way. Jan is raising her own two kids and dreams of escaping Jerusalem and going to college in Dallas; she's sustained by her born-again Christianity. Jan's brother, Alex, is a police officer who's haunted by nightmares about being raped by his uncle and is dealing with his own shadowy past: "There was something broken in me," he reflects. "Something that no one could love." And then there's Julie B.'s niece, Lydia, who lives in Dallas and is struggling with marital problems and the loss of three pregnancies. Most of the characters in the novel are survivors of horrific abuse, some of it at the hands of the monstrous Helen Jean, who was herself abused as a child. As the characters come together, they're forced to reckon with their family's troubled legacy, and they try, with mixed results, to come to terms with their shared history. This is an incredibly bleak novel, and it comes close to collapsing under the weight of its own melancholy--the characters are as unlucky as any this side of Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life (2015). But despite a melodramatic climactic scene, the novel is saved from total oblivion by Watkins' writing, which is strong, and her gift for realistic dialogue. It's not a bad novel, but one gets the feeling that Watkins is capable of much more. Suffocatingly sad.

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