Sometimes, you just pick your poison and pray
Stay the hell out of the swamp — the backwater town of Lower Congaree recites it like an eleventh commandment. But when exotic dancer Emmy Joiner sneaks under the dark tree-canopy behind her family trailer, she meets mysterious, tattooed Zara, the first girl she dares to kiss.
But the small-town South hates a woman who dares to dance instead of plucking chickens for minimum wage, and as Emmy’s life falls apart, her relationship with Zara grows more tangled and bizarre. Zara’s offering something beautiful. But while Emmy’s slowly strangling, its price may be more than she’s willing to pay.
Shifting between the green-bright cypress cathedral and the dreamland of a dance club, Broadbent’s unforgettably-voiced debut confronts the brutal realities of poverty in the South, with a sapphic tale both sultry and sinister, gritty and gothic.
Dark bleatings, my gorgeous tribe! Today I’m talking about a lovely little novella that I adore. And based on this read, I’ve decided that Elizabeth Broadbent might be the master of metaphor.
Emmy is an exotic dancer who lives in a trailer with her toxic family, and her sexuality is a secret that she keeps from them. There’s a nearby swamp, and it’s a well-stated opinion in town that everyone ought to stay away from it because apparently people go missing there. Emmy ignores this and goes wandering there anyway because she finds it peaceful. We’ll come back to the ingenious function of the swamp shortly.
First, let’s get into how brilliant Emmy is as a character. I loved her, I felt for her, and I wanted to punch almost everyone else in the story on her behalf. Her family are ashamed of her because of her job, they think she’s soiling the good family name because everyone in town knows she’s a dancer. They take any and all opportunity to slut-shame and degrade her, but have no problem taking her money. The way strip-club life and the inner turmoil of working in such a profession was the most realistic depiction I’ve seen of this entire issue. Some of my closest friends work in this industry and Emmy reminded me of them. It was refreshing to see an exotic dancer portrayed as an actual person rather than a raunchy, man-obsessed stereotype. I’m not even sure where the stereotype comes from, truth be told. I can honestly tell you that the least likely women in the world that the average man is likely to seduce are exotic dancers. But I digress.
Emmy is living in a sort of paralysis – she wants out of her situation but doesn’t have the financial freedom to escape. She doesn’t actually enjoy her job but it pays much better than the other local options. She’s lonely. And she walks in the swamp.
One day, in the swamp, she meets a mysterious, sexy woman called Zara. They start something. It gets sexy enough that I was blushing quite furiously as I read it, because apparently I’m an enormous, easily-embarrassed prude. But it’s very beautiful, and what they have is wholesome as well as sexy, and borne of a sincere interest and attraction to each other, without the problems that come with outside interference. Zara wants Emmy to go with her, and we (and Emmy) quickly realise that there’s a sort of supernatural component to accepting this offer of togetherness. It’s alien to Emmy, unknown, and at first, terrifying.
And that is when I realised how excellently the swamp itself serves as a metaphor for homosexuality. According to the narrow-minded, prejudiced locals, the swamp is dirty and dangerous, a place where sometimes people go “missing”. But in reality, as we see it through Emmy’s eyes, it’s peaceful and pretty and amazing people like Zara are there. It’s the place where Zara feels most herself, most calm, most accepted, and the least inhibited. It’s where she belongs, though the thought of accepting that and going with Zara into the unknown (her first real relationship) is scary to her at first. So scary that she might reject it.
I won’t tell you which path she decides to walk because I’d love for you to read this and find out for yourself. I think it’s a beautiful, lovely idea that weaves the grim, ugly nuances of reality into mystical, natural wonder.
I’d recommend this to people who prefer to tread very lightly on the horror side, and most definitely for people who are looking for more great LGBTQ+ reads. If you’d like to get a copy or check out the author, there are some links below for you:
Bleeeeat!
Happy Goat Horror 
Leave a comment