Most of the plot involves her struggles to care for her sister and to get to college despite a complete lack of familial support. Like her mother, Alex is a brilliant mathematician who is relentlessly pressured by society to leave math to men and instead to devote herself to raising her younger sister and staying within the domestic sphere. In this coming-of-age story, Alex grows up with the constant mystery of why some women dragon and what the phenomenon means for her family and her future.Īlex’s story, dragons aside, is a pretty straightforward coming of age tale taking her from her childhood through her early twenties, and revisiting her as an older woman. But across the country, women are turning into dragons and flying away in a process allied simply ‘dragoning’ – a few at a time, usually, with the exception of “the Mass Dragoning 0f 1955 – also known as The Day of Missing Mothers”.

People are reluctant to even mention them, and the government suppresses news and research about them. This is not a romance, but it will appeal to those who like women’s history with a side of rage and fantasy.Īlex Green is a little girl in 1950’s middle America when she first sees a dragon. I couldn’t stop reading it even when it made my chest hurt, and I’ve thought of it so many times since, with scenes popping into my head as though I just read them yesterday. When Women Were Dragons is unlike any other book I’ve read and I found to be painful, joyous, and liberating. Perfect for fans of THE HANDMAID'S TALE, VOX, and THE POWER.Genre: Literary Fiction, Science Fiction/Fantasy Everything is about to change, forever.Īnd when it does, this, too, will be unmentionable. Whether anyone likes it or not, the Mass Dragoning is coming. But she is a ghostly shadow of her former self, and with scars across her body-wide, deep burns, as though she had been attacked by a monster who breathed fire.Īlex, growing from young girl to fiercely independent teenager, is desperate for answers, but doesn't get any. Then Alex's mother disappears, and reappears a week later, one quiet Tuesday, with no explanation whatsoever as to where she has been. In her next-door neighbour's garden, in the spot where the old lady usually sits, is a huge dragon, an astonished expression on its face before it opens its wings and soars away across the rooftops.Īnd Alex doesn't see the little old lady after that.

In this timely and timeless speculative novel, set in 1950s America, Kelly Barnhill exposes a world that wants to keep girls and women small-and examines what happens when they rise up.Īlex Green is four years old when she first sees a dragon. In a world where girls and women are taught to be quiet, the dragons inside them are about to be set free.

When women were dragons summary