Happy Bad

Hernan Diaz meets Ottessa Moshfegh in this madcap road trip chronicle; a moving display of human connection in the face of violence and climate destruction from a remarkable new voice in fiction.

Beatrice works at Twin Bridge, a chronically underfunded residential treatment center in near-future East Texas, teeming with enraged teenage girls on either too many or not enough drugs. On a normal day, it’s difficult for Beatrice and the other staff—Arda, Carmen, and Linda—to keep their cool. Now, she’s in charge of overseeing the drug trial being conducted there: most of the girls are on heavy doses of BeZen, which produces wonderfully calming effects on (almost) everybody, except her most difficult charge, Teresa. If the trial goes well, the pharmaceutical company will pay for a swanky new facility far away from dust-blown Askewn. No stranger to the power of a well-placed lie, Beatrice just needs to fudge a few numbers on her BeZen report and all of Twin Bridge will get their ticket out of Texas. Then the lights go out.

A heat wave triggers a massive, sustained blackout. In the ensuing chaos and dust storm, a heavily medicated Teresa commits a shocking act of violence. Beatrice keeps this secret as the staff and residents leave town in a stolen van, hoping to reach the new facility in Atlanta. Meanwhile, Beatrice’s thoughts spiral deeper into the chain of events that drove her from Carolina when she herself was a teen: how her parents joined a bizarre new religion, and how their house burned down under mysterious circumstances. Now, facing police brutality, sweltering heat, panicked evacuees, the girls’ mounting withdrawal, and the consequences of her lies, Beatrice, her colleagues, and the strange but handsome handyman Frank must keep the group safe while searching for a route out of the blackout zone. Met with state violence as they try to cross a bridge to Mississippi, the group reroutes to the now-flooded bayous of southern Louisiana, where in the region''s neglected margins they find a refuge and the possibility of hope.