"A vivid, unflinching, and tender exploration of family trauma."
- Kirkus ReviewsIn Clovis, New Mexico, dirt is more than just clay and dust - It's memory. It's trauma. It's the foundation where love and loss collide, where family ties strangle as much as they save.
Calliope "Callie" Potts has always been caught between contradictions: a tender little sister shadowing her gifted brother Jude, a daughter forever scarred by a mother's rage and a father's failings, a woman who learns early that survival is built on silence, quick wit, and scars that make their own stories.
From dirt castles and My Little Ponies in a broken sandbox to the jagged truths of addiction, betrayal, and grief, Clovis is a searing coming-of-age story that refuses to look away. Told in Callie's fierce, unsparing voice, this novel peels back the layers of a fractured family and a girl growing into a woman who must reconcile the violence of her past with the possibility of joy.
This is not a story that's been polished for comfort. It's gritty, unapologetic, and laced with dark humor, the kind of book that makes you laugh even as it cracks your chest wide open. Annie Dike writes with a brutal lyricism, spinning childhood memories, hospital confessions, and adult reckonings into a narrative as raw and unrelenting as the New Mexico sun.
Clovis is for readers who crave stories that sting, who understand that family is never simple, and who know that sometimes the most beautiful truths rise up from the ugliest dirt.
If you've ever loved someone who both saved and broke you, this book will find you. And it won't let you go.
