Poor Deer

A wondrous, tender novel about a young girl grappling with her role in a tragic loss—and attempting to reshape the narrative of her life—from PEN/Faulkner Award nominee Claire Oshetsky

Margaret Murphy is a weaver of fantastic tales, growing up in a world where the truth is too much for one little girl to endure. Her first memory is of the day her friend Agnes died.

No one blames Margaret. Not in so many words. Her mother insists to everyone who will listen that her daughter never even left the house that day. Left alone to make sense of tragedy, Margaret wills herself to forget these unbearable memories, replacing them with imagined stories full of faith and magic—that always end happily.

Enter Poor Deer: a strange and formidable creature who winds her way uninvited into Margaret’s made-up tales. Poor Deer will not rest until Margaret faces the truth about her past and atones for her role in Agnes’s death.

Heartrending, hopeful, and boldly imagined, Poor Deer explores the journey toward understanding the children we once were and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of life’s most difficult moments.

Claire Oshetsky is the author of Chouette, which was a PEN Faulkner Nominee, the winner of the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and a finalist for the Northern California Book Award and the Barbellion Prize. They live in Santa Cruz with their family.

“Beautiful, terrifying. . . . Grief is a well-trod territory in fiction, but in Oshetsky’s hands, this familiar topic becomes fresh and strange. . . . With Poor Deer, Oshetsky proves themself the bard of unruly psyches.”
— New York Times Book Review

“[A] magnetic, fable-like novel. . . . Oshetsky structures parts of Poor Deer in the present, perhaps to show how guilt and grief can shape a person and inform their decisions . . . [Their] deeply perceptive treatment of Margaret’s emotionally impoverished childhood and warped psyche more than makes up for any plot holes or light sketching.” — San Francisco Chronicle

“[Oshetsky] renders the four-year-old Margaret’s inner life with sensitive complexity, depicting an alert child logic that defies adults’ view of her as slow and unfeeling.” — New Yorker

"Oshetsky handles Margaret’s monstrous manifestation with a delicate touch and infuses her daily life with a muted eeriness. . . . Readers will be captivated by Margaret’s beautifully weird search for atonement." — Publisher's Weekly

“If there is such a thing as a sophomore slump, Oshetsky has deftly sidestepped it, producing a tale that both enchants and perplexes . . . Oshetsky deftly pulls aside the curtain to show us Margaret’s struggle to reconcile her emotional, subjective history with the persistent, objective one that keeps intruding on her psyche. Ultimately, even if the details are somewhat suspect, emotional honesty may earn Margaret the right to the forgiveness she so desperately craves, and convince Poor Deer to trot back into the subconscious forest from which she sprang.” — Bookpage

“Oshetsky adds a hint of the supernatural to this exploration of destiny, unrequited affection, and the transformative power of guilt. They are especially skilled at outlining the tension between Margaret’s deeply complex inner life and her quiet, often taciturn exterior. This haunting and evocative novel will resonate with readers of Richard Russo, Lionel Shriver, and Markus Zusak.” — Booklist

"A lyrical, dreamlike, and heartfelt examination of how we heal from tragic events and learn to forgive ourselves." — The Rumpus

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