The Book of X by Sarah Rose Etter is a new book by Columbus-based independent press, Two Dollar Radio. If you are actively reading literature online these days, you should be aware of both Etter’s work and the press, and are probably already be excited for this book. 

The novel is about Cassie, who grows up with her mother, father, and brother. Her father and brother make their living by harvesting meat in the meat quarry that exists behind their family homestead. Though her father and brother work in the quarry, Cassie has an interest in it, bordering on obsession. But this buries the lede of the novel, or rather it’s central conceit, which is that Cassie, like her mother, and her mother’s mother before her, was born with her stomach twisted into a knot.