“Stunning… It’s a striking portrayal of women fighting for their lives, and one readers won’t soon forget.” 
—Publishers Weekly, Starred

“Tiffany McDaniel’s gorgeously written On the Savage Side. Reading this book is like looking through a haunted kaleidoscope.”
—Crime Reads

“The women of this book are clever and witchy, speaking in a poetic cadence they have created together… McDaniel is exceptionally inventive… McDaniel’s sentences are often striking, ethereal and transcendent… an undeniable sense of wonder. McDaniel pulls off an impressive twist at the finale, with a plot shift that might inspire you to start the book again if your nervous system can handle it. And of course, the killer is not the point. We read for the women, the dismal yet beatific textures of their lives. Stories about murdered women always fall on the savage side, but beneath that, too, is the pulse of something beautiful.”
—The New York Times

"In this atmospheric Appalachian Gothic, a poet and novelist draws on a string of actual unsolved murders in her native Ohio to capture what goes horribly wrong when women don’t fit a customary victim profile... McDaniel artfully evokes each facet of their common humanity, the sinuous landscape, and defiant community in the face of evil."
—OPRAH DAILY

“Devastating…McDaniel treats the women who ‘walk the streets of Chillicothe with holes in their arms’ with great tenderness, far more tenderness than they receive in life… The young women, and the world in which they live, won’t easily be forgotten.”
—The Columbus Dispatch

“On the Savage Side is gorgeously written. If you are looking for humor or hope then this is not the book for you. It’s gritty and dark and we feel for these lost souls. This must have been a difficult book to write. But it really had to be written.”
—Dayton Daily News

“Narrated by the deceased Arc, McDaniel’s novel is by turns stark and poetic, a bleak and solemn elegy to lives that in another place and time might have been lived on the beautiful side. It’s also a tale of a nation unraveling, drowning in rivers of hopelessness and drug addiction.”

—Library Journal, Starred

“A brilliant and beautifully written book about a stark and terrible world, On the Savage Side brings a sense of humanity to the ravages of addiction. This book is as important as it is timely.” 

—Garth Stein, author of The Art of Racing in the Rain

“Inspired by a true crime story, Tiffany McDaniel has written a novel of the highest literary merits, a book about the bonds of family, community, and the consequences of those bonds failing us. It is a story that speaks to America’s current moral disorientation, and then transcends it.” 

—Elliot Ackerman, author of Dark at the Crossing

Eye-opening, chilling and yet compassionate, On the Savage Side is a disturbing and insightful re-imagining of a true-life crime story.  

—Dan Chaon, author of Ill Will

Six women – mothers, daughters, sisters – gone missing.

Inspired by the unsolved murders of the Chillicothe Six, this harrowing and haunting novel tells the story of two sisters, both of whom could be the next victims.

From the internationally-bestselling author of Betty and The Summer that Melted Everything.

Arcade and Daffodil are twin sisters born one minute apart. With their fiery red hair and thirst for an escape, they forge an unbreakable bond nurtured by both their grandmother’s stories and their imaginations. Together, they create a world where a patch of grass reveals an archaeologist's dig, the smoke emerging from the local paper mill becomes the dust rising from wild horses galloping in the ground, and an abandoned 1950s convertible transforms into a time machine that can take them anywhere.

But the two sisters can’t escape the generational ghosts that haunts their family. Growing up in the shadow of the town, the sisters cling tight to one another. Years later, Arcade wrestles with these memories of her life, just as a local woman is discovered drowned in the river. Soon, more bodies are found. While her friends disappear around her, Arcade is forced to reckon with the past while the killer circles ever closer. Arcade’s promise to keep herself and her sister safe becomes increasingly desperate while the powerful riptide of the savage side becomes more difficult to survive.

Drawing from the true story of women killed in her native Ohio, acclaimed novelist and poet Tiffany McDaniel has written a moving literary testament and fearless elegy for missing women everywhere.

“Tiffany McDaniel’s characters will break a reader’s heart with their longing and vulnerable loves. A trio of women who could have been queens in a different parade, they tell stories of an America that deserves a closer look, from a writer who delineates their lives with tenderness.

—Susan Straight, author of Highwire Moon

In On the Savage Side, Tiffany McDaniel paints a portrait of addiction that is honest and unapologetically brutal, yet her twin protagonists are never defined solely by their struggles. Instead they are artists and swimmers, archaeologists and poets, searching for the smallest glints of hope in a world where their love for each other is the only constant. Dedicated to the memory of six women who disappeared or were killed in Chillicothe, Ohio, the novel asks pressing questions about why society deems some injustices tragic and others merely inconvenient. If only all women whose suffering has been ignored could have an artist as gifted as McDaniel to give their eulogy. 

—Anjali Sachdeva, author of All the Names They Used For God

Tiffany McDaniel spins an elaborate, glittering web of brutality and childlike innocence. On the Savage Side lays bare the cruel devolution of addiction, and the way it clings to a family, dragging them into poverty and desperate acts. This book will leave you breathless, heartbroken, and agape at how beauty persists in the midst of tragedy.

—Bryn Greenwood, author of The Reckless Oath We Made and All the Ugly and Wonderful Things