When We Were Feral, the debut novel from Shasta Grant, is a restrained, deeply affecting debut novel that asks profound questions about grief, loss, and the ways society assigns blame. Through Maggie, a young girl whose mother abandons her family the same summer another teenager drowns, the novel explores how communities often shun or marginalize those who exist on the periphery of tragedy. As Maggie witnesses the fallout of both losses, she observes who is allowed to grieve openly and whose suffering is considered legitimate.
Maggie balances resentment and longing for her absent mother with an emotional intelligence beyond her years. She recognizes many of the contradictions and injustices around her, even when that insight cannot shield her from her own pain. The novel also examines the lingering effects of trauma through characters such as Sarah’s mother, whose desperate attempts to protect her daughters from an unnamed threat create a claustrophobic atmosphere. In focusing so intensely on preventing future harm, she becomes blind to dangers already present in their lives.
The simplicity of the prose allows tenderness to emerge throughout the story. While the narrative clearly belongs to Maggie, her friends Sarah and Erin feel less like supporting characters and more like different facets of a shared adolescent experience shaped by loss. Their prepubescent uncertainty, intensified by circumstances beyond their control, exposes the fragile connective tissue holding their friendship together.
When Erin’s mother goes missing, Maggie throws herself into helping her friend, transforming the search into a personal mission. Her determination reveals a deeper motivation, like a lost child crying out for a parent in a crowded department store, Maggie is, “calling everyone and no one” – trying to conjure a mother – any mother. She’s searching for the possibility of a mother who might answer her own longing. That exploration of grief becomes not simply a story about absence, but about the universal desire for connection, protection, and belonging.
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