UC San Diego

BATSHIT is a cross-genre novel about girlhood, selfhood, collectivity, ecological relations, language, neurodivergence, and, quite literally, bats. Set in Olympia, WA in 1999, the plot follows two sets of sisters who call themselves The Six, because Lyla, the oldest, counts as three people. The Six attend the neighborhood church where the Purity Girls—a homogenous group of devout and chaste pre-teens—are revered, and their mothers, the Church Ladies, run the neighborhood politics and social life. After a hot summer exacerbates the smell of guano, courtesy of the little brown bats roosted underneath the bridge, the Church Ladies make it their mission to exterminate them. The Six, sensing kinship with this exquisitely misunderstood animal, fight back. As Lyla leads her loyal pack to save the bats, she faces the pressures of evangelicalism, deteriorating mental health, and the increasing notion that fitting in is another form of survival. Esther, Lyla’s younger sister, narrates the story from a decade later, piecing together a slippery memory as she tries to prove that she is not real but rather is one of her sister’s alters. Weaving together nonfiction essays on subjects such as etymology, echolocation, and invasive species; poems that use repetition as a type of echolocation; and a chorus where the shifting collective speaks together, Esther attempts to confirm her lack of selfhood but instead comes to an understanding of self defined by relations—to her sister, the Six, the bats, and the green verdant world of the Pacific Northwest.