Good Women, Halle Hill
Good Women, Halle Hill
List: $16.99 | Sale: $11.89
Club: $8.49

Good Women
Stories

Author: Halle Hill

Narrator: Tovah Ott

Unabridged: 5 hr 18 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/12/2023


Synopsis

"A stunning slow burn brimming with observation, emotion, and incident.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
“A fantastic firecracker of a collection I'll return to again and again!” —Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
In her dynamic debut, Halle Hill’s Good Women delves into the lives of twelve Black women across the Appalachian South.
A woman boards a Greyhound bus barreling toward Florida to meet her sugar daddy’s mother; a state fair employee considers revenge on a local preacher; a sister struggles with guilt as she helps her brother plan to run away with a man he's seeing in secret; a young woman who works for a scam for-profit college navigates the lies she sells for a living.
Darkly funny and deeply human, Good Women observes how place, blood ties, generational trauma, obsession, and boundaries―or lack thereof―influence how we navigate our small worlds, and how those worlds so often collide in ways we don’t expect. Through intimate moments of personal choice, Hill carefully shines a light on how these twelve women shape and form themselves through faith and abandon, transgression and conformity, community, caution, and solitude.
With precision and empathy, Hill captures the mundane in moments of absurdity, and bears witness to both joy and heartbreak, reminding us how the next moment could be life-changing. Vibrant and exacting, Hill is a must-read new voice in literary fiction.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Vicki on March 05, 2024

I cannot provide an unbiased review. Halle was a former student in the school where I served as principal. I met her when she was six and must confess that I cannot yet see Halle as a woman but still as the innocent little girl having no experience with the struggles she outlines in her debut novel.......more

Goodreads review by Sarah on December 28, 2023

Phenomenal short story collection. By far my favorite collection I’ve read in the last few years. Intimate glimpses into the lives of complicated, messy, lovable, southern Black women. My favorites in the collection were “Keeping Noisettes”, “How to Cut and Quarter”, and “Skin Hunger”.......more

Goodreads review by Matti on April 29, 2024

Good Women is a collection of 12 short stories that focus on the lives of Black women in Southern Appalachia, and feature a different woman in each story. Hill’s 12 stories provide vignettes of life as a Black woman across Southern Appalachia as they work to navigate racial, gender, and regional exp......more

Goodreads review by Hannah on May 05, 2025

Short stories about black women in southern Appalachia. Wonderful, terrible, loving, violent, insightful stories. Phenomenal collection, truly impressive. I read it in one sitting.......more

Goodreads review by Jenica on October 05, 2024

I picked this up because of Philyaw's blurb on the cover, but this collection of short stories reminded me why I'm not a literary fiction girlie. These short stories are just so sad. And for me, a girl from Appalachia who already feels like everyone thinks we're just a mess, I kind of wanted more ha......more