It's 1973. Bice Rappa's mother is dead, her older brother has disappeared, and her controlling father barely lets her leave their house in Queens. As he reads books on horticulture and dissects the bodies of birds, she dreams of going to school-that is, until she finds out that the man who is raising her has made her poisonous.
For Bice, escaping home means befriending an orphaned daredevil, charming the donor coordinator at a Manhattan fertility clinic, and becoming the single mother of a baby named Mari. For her brother, it means living in a windowless room in an artist commune where he struggles with obsessive fears of climate crisis and death. Against the apocalyptic backdrop of Y2K, their father will want nothing more than to track down-and abduct-his only grandchild. When the Rappas' paths cross again, will Bice and her daughter be able to protect each other?
A contemporary gothic retelling of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter,"
The Poison Girl
follows three generations of girls and women through New York City as they navigate experiences of diaspora and neurodivergence, patriarchal architectures, and environmental violence.