Armadillos

A Texas teenager finds a world beyond her abusive family: “Lynch can tell a story deep as a wound… Read this one.”—Jeanette Winterson, New York Times-bestselling author of Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Aggie is fifteen-year-old girl, a “sub” from a “sub” family, one of Texas’s downtrodden. Her father and brother remind her of that status, week in, week out. She has only the vaguest notion that there is something wrong with the abuse she endures and instead dreams of the outside world.

And then one day, Aggie walks out, and like the armadillos that flourish in Texas’s barren landscape, she is a survivor...

In her escape, she gravitates to those who are just as maltreated as she is. They offer Aggie the sense of family, albeit a thoroughly dysfunctional one, that she’s been searching for. But when she gets embroiled in a crisis involving stolen money, Aggie soon realizes there are some problems you can’t run away from.

“A truly stunning debut.”—The Scottish Sun

Shortlisted for the Amazon Rising Star Award

Longlisted for the Guardian Not the Booker Prize 2016