Three women are compelled by infection, friendship, and ambition to abandon their established lives and travel toward the Pacific Ocean in Westward Women, Alice Martin's debut literary science fiction.
In 1973, a strange affliction starts affecting young women across the United States. It begins with an uncontrollable itch and drives them to travel west. Though some inexplicably recover, others disappear and are never found, and some are even murdered. Aimee endures a lonely college graduation and calls her best friend back home only to discover that Ginny has left. Aimee always planned to return and stay in her hometown, but she feels compelled to find Ginny and make sure she is safe. Eve is a journalist desperate for an angle on the "Westward Women" story. She's heard rumors of a man called the Piper who transports women on a bus. Teenie rides with the Piper, desperate enough from the itch when he found her not to question his motives. As the disease begins to influence her mind, Teenie's only other desire is not to forget her lost sister.
Martin crafts an intricate plot that inexorably brings these women together while illuminating how women's desires are often pathologized or suppressed. The line between sickness and health blurs as the uninfected seek answers and the infected find their symptoms mysteriously soothed. The result is a moving and otherworldly look at the delicate balance between freedom and the ties that bind. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library