My Heart is a Chainsaw

Alma Katsu calls My Heart Is a Chainsaw 'a homage to slasher films that also manages to defy and transcend genre.' On the surface, it is a story of murder in small-town America. But beneath lies its beating heart: a biting critique of American colonialism, Indigenous displacement, and gentrification, alongside a heartbreaking portrait of a broken young girl who uses horror movies to cope with the horror of her own life.

Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world where protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies. Jade particularly resonates with those where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. She narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopaedic mind of blood and masked murderers, predicting exactly how the plot will unfold.

My Heart Is a Chainsaw is her story, her homage to horror, revenge, and triumph.