My Bloodied Mother Rescued Me From The Depths

In Coldwater Hollow, a remote village where girls are drowned at birth and women are bought and sold, a mother forces her child to live as a mute boy. She binds the child's chest, chains the child at home, and forbids any speech, while the village chief, Virgil Thompson, and other men use her for their pleasure. When the teacher, Mr. Dean Rivers, hands the child a newborn girl to drown in exchange for half a biscuit, the mother intervenes, beating the child and dragging the child away by a dog chain.

Yet the mother's madness hides a desperate plan. She drills the child on an escape route over the mountain, toward three towns and a fourth, where a store must be broken and the police called to reach a grandfather named Samuel Alexander in Oakwood Estates, Parkland, Illinois. The child clings to the promise of a warm biscuit and a mother's love, even as the village laughs at the madwoman and her mute child.