Martha's Daughter — David Haynes

Martha’s Daughter is David’s first short story collection and the first time that David’s stories have ever been assembled in one volume. The collection ranges from the magically real life of a city’s crumbling superhero to a rundown motel whose long-term guests are lucky to call home, to the titular novella, “Martha’s Daughter,” which details the first hours after Cynthia finds out her mother has died. What we learn is that Cynthia is a woman who has been bullied by her mother’s overbearing opinions, her disdain for difference, her respectability politics, her outdated beliefs about how men and women should relate to one another. Martha’s death is less a catalyst for Cynthia's grief than an opportunity to free herself of a burden too long endured.The sixth in McSweeney’s Of the Diaspora series, Martha’s Daughter is another record in David’s oeuvre, of the people and places he’s been recording since the beginning of his career, some thirty years ago. Editors interested in the everyday gossip and lives of sort of country city folk will enjoy this collection and its full circle connection to David’s previous novels.