Most Grievous Fault

Twenty-nine-year-old Crystal Constantine is a single parent who cannot see beyond the piles of bills, the threat of eviction, the weight of her past and the relentless needs of her teenage daughter Becky. How can she not drink? How can she not hit?

After fourteen-year-old Becky, who is suspected of having fetal alcohol syndrome, takes off her clothes for a group of boys at school, Crystal is pressured into sending her to a traditional Catholic school. Suddenly, the apartment echoes with bible verses and Hail Marys, and Crystal is dropped into a world of virtue and innocence completely foreign to all she’s ever known. When Crystal meets Tim, a man of strict religious morals, she is equal parts afraid and elated. He interprets her frigidity as chastity, and Crystal sees no option but to deny that Becky, the result of rape, is her daughter. She sends Becky to live with her alcoholic grandmother, the same abusive, neglectful woman Crystal blames for her own troubles. Despite an acute ache for the well-being of her daughter, Crystal believes that, finally, happiness is within reach. She sees freedom, a wedding, a big house, money! But when Becky comes home distraught and uncommunicative, and arranges a secret and disastrous meeting with the man she believes is her father, Crystal is forced to acknowledge her own role in the perpetuation of trauma.

Through unflinching and unsentimental prose, Meg Todd delivers a story about being inescapably marginalized and the complexities of the social welfare system.