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Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: AudiobookHub Recommendation
Chapter 2: — The River That Remembers
Chapter 3: — Beautiful Side, Savage Side
Chapter 4: — Cleopatra’s Time Machine
Chapter 5: — Reports and Rituals
Chapter 6: — Big Gray and the Pool of Yes
Chapter 7: — Blue Hour and the Spider
Chapter 8: — Crowns of Twigs and Ashes
Chapter 9: — Evergreen Daughters
Chapter 10: — Eagle and the Low Sky
Chapter 11: — Evidence of Rough Handling
Chapter 12: — The Sister Who Lived Twice
Chapter 13: — Addie’s Pages, The River’s Thread
Chapter 14: — Living on the Savage Side
Chapter 15: — Shiny Among the Stars
Description
Set in Chillicothe, Ohio, On the Savage Side follows twin sisters Arcade “Arc” and Daffodil “Daffy” Doggs as they come of age in a family broken by addiction and a town buckling under it. Their grandmother, Mamaw Milkweed, teaches them to divide life into the “beautiful side” and the “savage side,” a map the girls cling to as they dive into sex work, crowns of dope, and the thin promises of men. Along the river—where girls float facedown—Arc and her friends Thursday, Sage Nell, Indigo, and Violet become targets of a killer locals whisper about as River Man. The novel moves between childhood and 1993–1994, between rehab and relapse, between forensic reports and whispered diaries, until a final truth knocks the wind from the story: the dead are not always who we think they are, and survival sometimes looks like pretending to live twice. This is a love story between sisters, a lament for the Chillicothe Six, and a clear‑eyed reckoning with what the river keeps.
Who Should Listen
- Listeners drawn to literary crime that centers victims and community over culprits
- Fans of gritty, lyrical storytelling (think Daniel Woodrell, Jesmyn Ward, Emma Cline)
- Book clubs ready to discuss addiction, sisterhood, and structural neglect
- True‑crime skeptics who want empathy over spectacle
- Anyone from Rust Belt towns who recognizes the paper mill sky