Her father immediately marries his secretary, whom he had been having an affair with, and moves Alex and Beatrice into a small apartment. When Alex is 15 her mother dies from a recurrence of breast cancer. Marla's daughter Beatrice is absorbed into the family and becomes Alex's sister with Alex's family, and the rest of the country, determined to pretend the dragoning never happened despite individual dragonings continuing to occur with regularity. In 1955 Marla leaves Alex her texts and love letters between her and several women before disappearing during the mass dragoning event of 1955 in which women morphed into dragons. In the 1950s Alexandra 'Alex' Green, the only child of an absentee father and a stern housewife mother, grows up under the influence of her beloved aunt Marla. and imagines an alternative history where aggrieved and persecuted women are able to transform into dragons, culminating in the 1955 mass dragoning event in which many wives and mothers were transformed. Kirkus Reviews named When Women Were Dragons one of the best science fiction and fantasy books of 2022. When Women Were Dragons exposes a world that wants to keep women small-their lives and their prospects-and examines what happens when they rise en masse and take up the space they deserve.When Women Were Dragons is a 2022 fantasy novel by Kelly Barnhill. In this timely and timeless speculative novel, award-winning author Kelly Barnhill boldly explores rage, memory, and the tyranny of forced limitations. It’s taboo to speak of.įorced into silence, Alex nevertheless must face the consequences of this astonishing event: a mother more protective than ever an absentee father the upsetting insistence that her aunt never even existed and watching her beloved cousin Bea become dangerously obsessed with the forbidden. Was it their choice? What will become of those left behind? Why did Alex’s beloved aunt Marla transform but her mother did not? Alex doesn’t know. The first adult novel by the Newbery award-winning author of The Girl Who Drank the MoonĪlex Green is a young girl in a world much like ours, except for its most seminal event: the Mass Dragoning of 1955, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary wives and mothers sprouted wings, scales, and talons left a trail of fiery destruction in their path and took to the skies.

A rollicking feminist tale set in 1950s America where thousands of women have spontaneously transformed into dragons, exploding notions of a woman’s place in the world and expanding minds about accepting others for who they really are.

When women were dragons kelly barnhill