There’s a floating aphorism about everyone fighting a battle we know nothing about. This has never been more true in the case of Vesper Wright, the protagonist of Rachel Harrison’s hair-raising novel, Black Sheep. Four years before we meet her, Vesper left her family, friends, and community to scrape together an independent life as a waitress at a TGIF clone of a restaurant.
It takes a few chapters to learn the full extent of the reasons Vesper fled her home in rural New Jersey. There are hints that her family is strictly religious, very insular, and absolutely stifling. Vesper has a fraught relationship with her constantly disapproving scream queen mother. (Vesper cuts and dyes her hair to minimize her resemblance to her famous mother.) So far, this is nothing we haven’t heard before. What makes Vesper’s battle unlike anyone else’s is the nature of the religion (very much not Christianity) her family and community follow.
The main plot of Black Sheep kicks off when Vesper receives an invitation to the wedding of her former best friend and former boyfriend. Surprisingly, given Vesper’s fiercely guarded independence, she decides to travel back to her childhood home to attend. Virgil, New Jersey, put my hackles up as soon as Vesper arrives. The people have a false cheeriness that grates and, when we learn exactly who these people worship, the discordance grows even stronger. The constant demonstrations of piety annoyed me almost as much as they annoyed Vesper.
Once we know what Vesper ran from, Black Sheep kicks into high gear. Vesper finds herself in a real-life horror movie, as harrowing as anything her mother acted out for the silver screen. Underneath this is a surprising quandary for Vesper to unpick: how much is she the product of her parents and upbringing? Can she escape her destiny? This battle is much more familiar than the infernal one Vesper has been fighting most of her life. And this battle made it a lot easier for me to sympathize with our prickly heroine.
Readers who like their family dramas horrifying (literally) should check out Black Sheep.