Girls with Long Shadows - by Tennessee Hill (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Identical triplets Baby A, Baby B, and Baby C Binderup were welcomed into the world as their mother was ushered out of it, leaving them nameless and in the care of their Gram, Isadora. Nineteen years later, the triplets work at their Gram's crumbling golf course in Longshadow, Texas, where the ever-watchful eyes of the town observe them serving up glasses of ice-cold lemonade to golfers, swimming in the murky waters of the neighboring bayou, or slipping t-shirts off their sunburnt shoulders in hopes of attracting the kind of attention they are only beginning to understand. Cautious Baby B watches as lustful Baby A and introverted Baby C find matches among the town boys. Even Baby B has noticed that the town's golden boy seems to be intrigued by her, only her. Just as each girl's desire to be seen for herself is becoming fulfilled, a seemingly trivial kiss is bestowed on the wrong sister, leading to a moment of unspeakable violence that will upend the triplets' world forever."--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

"A stunner. Alternating between sharp cuts and a feather touch, Tennessee Hill beautifully evokes the sensation of realizing just how many people have a hold on the person you are, the person you hope to become."--Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Run for the Hills

"Singular, striking, and sly, Girls with Long Shadows seduced me from its first sentence to its last . . . . What a delicate, hot-blooded tempest of a debut."--Amy Jo Burns, author of Mercury

With the haunting, romantic voyeurism of The Virgin Suicides and the atmosphere and emotional intensity of Where the Crawdads Sing, an intoxicating Southern Gothic debut novel about identical triplets whose lives are devastated when their burgeoning desires turn deadly.

Identical triplets Baby A, Baby B, and Baby C Binderup were welcomed into the world as their mother was ushered out of it, leaving them nameless and in the care of their Gram, Isadora. Nineteen years later, the triplets work at their Gram's crumbling golf course in Longshadow, Texas, where the ever-watchful eyes of the town observe them serving up glasses of ice-cold lemonade to golfers, swimming in the murky waters of the neighboring bayou, or slipping t-shirts off their sunburnt shoulders in hopes of attracting the kind of attention they are only beginning to understand.

Cautious Baby B watches as lustful Baby A and introverted Baby C find matches among the town boys. Even Baby B has noticed that the town's golden boy seems to be intrigued by her, only her. Just as each girl's desire to be seen for herself is becoming fulfilled, a seemingly trivial kiss is bestowed on the wrong sister, leading to a moment of unspeakable violence that will upend the triplets' world forever.

Pulsating with menace and narrated with hypnotic lyricism, Girls with Long Shadows is an electrifying literary thriller that captures how female teenage angst can turn lethal when insecurities are weaponized and sibling bonds are severed. Tense, lush, and painfully beautiful, it forces us to consider the lengths to which we will go to claim our own personhood.

Review Quotes

"Tennessee Hill delivers a lush and lacerating Southern Gothic debut that reads like a fever dream . . . . Hill's prose is rich and elegiac, steeped in fervor and memory, with vivid sensory detail and a slow, simmering tension that builds toward devastation. The novel pulses with questions about what it means to be known, and what it costs to break free from the roles we're assigned. This is a story that leaves a bruise--tender, disquieting and impossible to ignore." -- Seattle Times

"Echoing The Virgin Suicides, this Southern Gothic literary thriller explores what happens when teenage angst and female desire turn deadly." -- Bustle

"Atmospheric debut . . . .The sense of dread simmers until a shocking tragedy rends the sisters apart and rocks all of Longshadow. A moody and meditative slow-burn bildungsroman." -- Booklist

"Unforgettable, devastating . . . Tennessee Hill [demonstrates] why girls are not responsible for the assumptions of others, yet they bear the consequences, time and time again . . . . While the triplets' circumstances are unique, the feelings Baby B describes will be familiar to many women: being unable to escape the predation of the male gaze while simultaneously feeling invisible or replaceable. As if you could be any woman. As if all women are identical sisters." -- Chapter 16

"Southern Gothic with a sly, wild heart . . . . There are echoes of The Virgin Suicides and Where the Crawdads Sing, but Hill's voice is all her own: sharp, lyrical, and laced with something just a little wicked . . . . If you like your fiction bold and a little reckless--books that smell like cigarette smoke and honeysuckle--Girls With Long Shadows should be at the top of your list for the summer. " -- Summer Says

"Hill's prose is thick with atmosphere." -- Publishers Weekly

"A stunner. Alternating between sharp cuts and a feather touch, Tennessee Hill beautifully evokes the sensation of realizing just how many people have a hold on the person you are, the person you hope to become." -- Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Run for the Hills

"Identity is a major theme in Girls with Long Shadows--how one defines it and how others perceive it . . . . As the girls' courting rituals ramp up over the course of the summer, the sisters learn some hard lessons about how interchangeable they may be in the eyes of certain boys in town. In the process, betrayals are committed, jealousies are unleashed and divisiveness grows, threatening to destroy the triplets' bond and possibly one or more of their lives." -- Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Tennessee Hill's first novel, Girls with Long Shadows, is a dreamy, atmospheric tale of sisterhood and coming-of-age . . . . A tautly plotted Southern gothic . . . . Encompassing a single summer in the dripping, humid South, Hill's haunting debut deals in lyricism and tragedy as it considers the harm done to young women by the outside gaze. Shelf Talker: Identical triplet girls are linked to tragedies across generations in this evocative first novel set along the swampy Texas Gulf Coast." -- Shelf Awareness

"Tennessee Hill's debut novel weaves a mesmerizing tale of identity, desire, and tragedy that announces her as a significant new voice in Southern Gothic literature . . . the strength of Hill's prose and her insightful exploration of sisterhood mark Girls with Long Shadows as one of the most impressive debuts of the year . . . . With a voice as distinctive as a fingerprint and prose that ripples with the same hypnotic cadence as the bayou waters central to the story, Hill crafts a Southern Gothic narrative that lingers long after the final page." -- Book Club

"Girls with Long Shadows, Tennessee Hill's riveting debut novel, is a brilliant, engrossing portrait of three sisters and the bonds of love and betrayal. Babies A, B, and C--triplet girls whose mother died young--move from a plural unity to their splintered selves within a town where the chorus of voices and history provide an emotionally charged backdrop for all that plays out. Hill is a gifted talent and I look forward to more." -- Jill McCorkle, New York Times bestselling author of Old Crimes and Life After Life

"An atmospheric debut that startles with its exploration of sisterhood." -- Largehearted Boy

"Singular, striking, and sly, Girls with Long Shadows seduced me from its first sentence to its last. This book has so much scathing beauty in it I could feel the scrape of a knife on every page. What a delicate, hot-blooded tempest of a debut." -- Amy Jo Burns, author of Mercury

"Girls with Long Shadows is like nothing I've read before, yet achingly familiar in its complex portrayal of sisters, identity, and teenage girlhood. Atmospheric, addictive, a beating heart of a book. Tennessee Hill writes like a dream." -- Julia Fine, author of What Should Be Wild and Maddalena and the Dark

"Girls with Long Shadows isn't merely a psychological thriller with Gothic trappings; it's a nuanced exploration of grief, identity, desire, and the complex bonds of sisterhood . . . . Girls with Long Shadows is a Southern Gothic powerhouse that seeps into your consciousness like humidity on a Texas summer day . . . . What unfolds is not merely a coming-of-age tale but a profound meditation on identity, desire, and the desperate need to be recognized as an individual when the world sees you only as one-third of a whole." -- The Bookish Elf

"A poetic, haunting, haunted novel--as suspenseful as it is lyrical. Within a sisterhood that's more like self-replication, Girls with Long Shadows maps the shimmering contours of identity and unfolds the kinds of damage only our most beloved can do to us. Baby B and her sisters moved and unsettled me and worked their way deep under my skin." -- Clare Beams, author of The Garden

"With bewitching lyricism and intimacy, Tennessee Hill invokes the rivalries, secrets, and betrayals that swirl around the near-mythic Binderup triplets in small-town South Texas. These sweltering summer days on the bayou seethe with fury and lust and shared grief, along with a tender evocation of the desire to be seen and known. Girls with Long Shadows is a scorcher of a first novel, stupefyingly good." -- Bryn Chancellor, author of Sycamore