Lady X by Molly Fader combines the coalition-building spirit of a protest with the adrenaline and can't-look-away shock of a fight, and the result is a defiantly feminist novel celebrating the powerful bonds of sisterhood, found family, and resistance. The narrative alternates between 2024, when Margot's perfect life is unraveling, and the sweltering summer of 1977, when both serial killer Son of Sam and "Lady X, mysterious feminist icon and violent vigilante" are terrorizing New York City. The earlier timeline explains how Lady X came to be, the women who became her family, and the reasons behind her destructive activism. Fader keeps the connection between these two points taut, gradually building the tension as Margot struggles against public disgrace and with newspaper clippings that suggest there's more to her mother than she knew.
Ever since the one-two punch of discovering her movie star husband Jack's wildly inappropriate indiscretions and the possibility of her mother's secret past, Margot has been sad: for herself and her kids, for the young women Jack preyed upon, for her once-unstoppable mom, who's withering in a care facility after the car crash that killed Margot's dad. Her sister, Julia, understands until she doesn't, pushing Margot to feel something more: "I love you, Margot. But when the fuck are you going to get angry?" Lady X depicts what happens when women who have been hurt, belittled, attacked, raped, or betrayed get angry. It invites women everywhere to get mad and to put that anger to work fighting back, reminding them that "any of us can be Lady X." --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian